Chopped At Home

Posted by Paulette

It's the last few days before you go grocery shopping and you look into the fridge, freezer and pantry and wonder to yourself, "what am I going to make for dinner?"
These are the days that new recipes get invented in our house. I say that I am playing the game Chopped.

Have you ever watched that show? I am fascinated that chefs can take ingredients that are so in-congruent to one another and make something fantastic! I don't go out and buy the ingredients to make their dishes, but I do get some inspiration from their thinking outside the box.

Last night I put on a pot of black beans in the crockpot to cook all day while we were at church. Beyond that I had no plans for what to do for dinner. I had some produce that needed to be used before it went bad, and I knew we were out of corn tortillas, my usual stand-by to have with beans. So I pretended I was a fabulous chef, and made something up.   

I had 2 avocados, 3 red bell peppers, and a bag of spring greens. 
One avocado was chopped up and layered over the spring greens, and the 3 peppers were roasted on the stove element until they were black. Which as always, set off the smoke alarms. My kids love to have fire drills! Once they were blackened (the peppers not the kids, silly) I wrapped them in paper towel to sweat while I made the salad dressing.

I looked up a recipe for Avocado dressing and tweaked it a bit. Hey, it was from Paula Deen. Can we say, "Fattening?"

Here's her recipe:

1 large avocado, peeled and mashed with 2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
Dash cayenne pepper

Directions

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Chill and serve.

And here's mine:

1 large avocado, peeled and cut into cubes

1 cup fat free Greek Yogurt

Juice of 1 large lemon

2 garlic cloves

1/2 small onion

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon sea salt

1/3 cup water

Throw into a blender, and blend until smooth

You can do it without the water, but it's really thick.

Now back to the salad. Rub the black off  the peppers with the paper towel, slice and throw into the salad. I have to tell you. It's like eating candy when you get to a piece of pepper. YUM!

 

I also served the black beans with the  Jalapeno-Cheddar-Corn Muffins. 

I would say that I won this round. Now, where's my $10,000?