Mixing, mixing, mixing

My Christmas shopping budget this year was exactly $0 (you could also say it’s -$28,000 and counting, thank you grad school), so I had to be even more thoughtful (aka homemade) with my gifts than usual. Every year, my dad and stepmom, who run a folk music coffeehouse, host a Pickin’ and Eatin’ New Year’s Day Party. All of their music friends come over, and everyone eats and jams until the wee hours. With this in mind, I presented them with a certificate for my cooking/cleaning services today in preparation for their big party tomorrow.

As soon as I arrived, I turned into a walking food processor.

I made another batch of Rae Ann’s yummy holiday cream cheese spread, the one that tastes like carrot cake frosting. We opted to use regular cream cheese this time, though — wouldn’t want to overwhelm the party-goers with too much health.

Pre-mix, with cream cheese, craisins, orange juice concentrate, orange zest, pecans, cinnamon:

cream cheese, craisins, orange juice concentrate, orange zest, pecans, cinnamon

Post-mix, I had to taste test some on a cracker of course:

The spread is now in the fridge, chilling into its final ball shape form.

Next, Rae Ann found a can of chickpeas in a cupboard, so I offered to make hummus. Because the house was not stocked with any traditional hummus ingredients, we improvised and added part-skim ricotta, a tomato-bacon cream cheese flavor packet, sauteed asparagus, and other spices. The end result is DELICIOUS (I had to eat a lot of it throughout the whole process to make sure the taste was just right):

During the cupboard search for hummus ingredients, I also came upon some Belgian dark chocolate-covered poppycock, a piece of which spontaneously jumped into my mouth:

Finally, I needed to find a use for the remaining 2.5 cups of ricotta since the package was open and had no future commitments. I searched for some pumpkin to no avail, but Rae Ann offered me an even better alternative: sweet potatoes! Can you guess what it is going to be?