Saturday, May 21, 2011

Experimenting....

While I was blogging about my spinach soup the other day and thinking about how much I really love spinach I started reminiscing about some of the food that I no longer eat that I used to really enjoyed.

When I lived in MN there was a restaurant called Copelands that has a New Orleans style menu.  I've heard the MN location actually closed some time ago which is really sad because the food was ridiculous!  I know they made tons of money off of me because I used to go there every chance I got.  My Sister and a few of my best friends threw me a surprise b-day party there when I turned 33 or 34.  Best party ever!  But that's a story for a different day.   Anyway....they had this spinach and artichoke dip and I swear it's the best I ever had.  I settled for Olive Gardens dip when we moved away, which was pretty good, but definitely not as good as Copelands.

Yesterday I decided to try my hand at  making a  vegan version to satisfy my craving and it turned out pretty good.  I'll have to play around with the measurements a bit because it was a little too zesty for me; I think it may be due to my not using fresh artichokes.  I was being lazy and didn't really feel like taking the time to cook them so I just decided to buy the ones that come in the jar.  I used spinach and artichokes of course and then a vegan cream cheese, vegan mozzarella instead of parmesan (haven't found a vegan parmesan cheese yet) sour cream, and a few other ingredients I can recall off the top of my head at the moment.  It wasn't really complicated and didn't take very long to prepare.  Everyone enjoyed it which you know always makes me happy.  I chose to serve it with some warmed garlic naan that we had....they actually went pretty well together.

I didn't take pictures of the preparation, but did take a picture of the finished product:

Finished Dip

Served with Garlic Naan 



Ok, I'm thinking I really need to not blog about food late at night because all it does is make me hungry and  tempts me into going and grabbing something to eat.  I don't think eating at 11:45 at night is really conducive to my desire to lose weight.  Guess I'll practice some self control and just take myself to sleep.  Night All!!! 

7 comments:

Jameil said...

Yummy! BTW I love reading about non-vegan foods you miss. IDK why but I'm sure my food obsession has something to do with it.

Jameil said...

Oh & I just saw what you said about the apt. situation. I'm talking about apartments where you have separate leases. They're not usually done through schools but they're usually near campus. He should know what you're talking about. You can still live w/whoever you want but you're not responsible if they can't pay.

Unknown said...

@ Jameil. You're so funny. I could give you a whole list if it makes you happy. I think I'm obsessed with food also. I've found that some of my fondest memories all revolve around food in some way or another. So sad! Lol

I'm going to look into the apartment thing and talk to son about it. He hasn't brought it up since the initial discussion, but then I haven't seen much of him in the past week. I think he's really ready to move, especially since I was on his BUTT about cleaning a few weeks back.

Aly Cat 121 said...

Oh my *licking lips* that looks hella good! Girl, you gone have me trying to make some dayum spinach dip now. LOL

Unknown said...

@ Aly....Girl make it. I cant wait to try it again and modify my measurements. I know it'll be so much better next time around.

Anonymous said...

Yum, yum, yum!!!! Looks delish. Ok, so obviously I've been on the S.L.O.W. bus. Why are I just realizing today that you are a vegan cook? *lol* How'd I miss that???

Unknown said...

@ MrsTdj. Slow bus? Lol. Funny. I don't know how you missed it, although we cant technically cant consider ourselves vegan because we still eat fish. Tuna and Salmon only. I do shrimp occasionally but hubby wont touch it.