Buffalo Chicken Dip

So, there's this annoying thing that happens when you have a food blog...

You assemble a collection of recipes on your blog that you love...but you can't make them again if you want to have time to develop new blog material.

During October, I said to heck with new blog material, and remade some of my favorite things from A Bitchin' Kitchen, specifically, this, this, and this. I only made one new recipe all month - a hot mess of an apple pie that was soooo not blog-worthy. If anyone has an apple pie recipe that doesn't turn out like apple soup, please send it to me and you'll be my best friend fo' lyfe. I also made this new to the blog (but not new to me) buffalo chicken dip. I know there are roughly 348272934 renditions of this dip floating around in internet-land, but I am sharing my version anyway.

A lot of people make this dip with canned chicken and blue cheese. However, canned chicken scares the heck out of me, and James is skeptical of blue cheese, so my version contains neither. Please don't leave me mean comments for making unauthentic buffalo chicken dip. I seriously saw that happen on a big blogger's site once when she made hers with ranch and cheddar.

And since it's almost Friday, have a fantabulous weekend everyone! I have big plans that involve breakfast burritos, day drinking Bloody Mary's on a heated patio, and Season 2 of Scandal on Netflix. I couldn't BE more psyched. Onward with the recipe!

Baked Pumpkin Donuts

It's hard to believe this is my 5th fall in a row having this blog. In November 2009, I posted these pumpkin pie bars ('scuse the horrible photo) and outed myself to the world (aka the 3 people who read my blog back then) as a pumpkin-aholic. I feel like it's become such a food blogger cliche to lose one's shit over pumpkin, however, I do not care. Pumpkin is unarguably delicious, and I get super psyched to bake with it every fall.

Fortunately for me, James (the aforementioned boyfriend) also enjoys pumpkin, and he tracked down a case of the elusive Southern Tier Pumking last week. What I'm about to write next is very important: Pumking is the best pumpkin beer I've ever had. If you can find it in your neck of the woods, buy it. Unlike most pumpkin beers that only taste like spices, Pumking actually tastes like pumpkin pie. It's incredible. Anyway, I decided that we needed a pumpkin food to pair with our pumpkin beer...so, here we are. These probably make more sense for breakfast, but life is too short to be sensible. Have a donut with your beer. Or beer with your breakfast...your choice.

Lavender Honey Ice Cream

Someday in the near future, I hope to begin a post with something other than an explanation of where the heck I've been. Today isn't that day.

My new excuse for being the worst food blogger on the planet is my recent move. I moved to the Clizzle-Dizzle at the end of July and took my sweet ass time unpacking my kitchen and otherwise getting my ish together. I've been wanting to live in this neighborhood for a long time, primarily because it's super walkable to about a bajillion restaurants and bars. Bonus: my new place is only 15 minutes from my office, has a huge balcony that I could do a cartwheel on if I knew how to do cartwheels, and so much closet space that I actually have a prop closet. Fellow food bloggers totally get how exciting this is. 

One of the first things I made in my new kitchen was this ice cream. As I mentioned back in February, I'm obsessed with Nancy Meyers' food-porny movie It's Complicated. Since I'm a weirdo, I decided that I want to make all the foods that Meryl Streep's character makes in the movie. I started with Croque Monsieur several months ago, and now I'm onto lavender honey ice cream.

The culinary lavender required to make this is kind of a pain in the butt to track down, but it's worth the trip to a specialty store (I found mine at Dean and Deluca). Also, the ice cream container you see in the photo is from Sweet Bliss. I bought a pack of their disposable pint sized containers and a pack of their quart containers a couple years ago, and pretty much have ice cream storage for life. Homemade ice cream gets freezer burn much more quickly than commercial ice cream, and these containers buy you an extra couple days.