You mean I actually have to use the oven?

We're hosting an Easter Dinner for R's family this Friday. I suppose it's about time we got off our butts and had family over for dinner. We've been mooching on his mom for years. She puts out an amazing spread every holiday. We usually bring an appetizer or dessert.

R and I rarely entertain. Besides being busy doing our own thing, it might have something to do with the following three things:

1. Our lack of a dining room or a table. What you can't see in the picture is that our kitchen is right on the other side of the brown um, thing on the right side of the picture. That brown thing is our kitchen island. I really don't miss having a proper table though. I tend to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table when eating and R likes to eat over the sink. Yes, we're one of those people.

2. Cooking to us means R will scavenge for a variety of foods which include peanut butter and honey; and I'll break out my collection of 5-minute meal options which likely involve the words "Just-Add-Water" in the recipe.

3. Our lack of cookware in the arsenal. We currently have: one pot, one frying pan, one glass baking dish and a muffin baking tin. And we don't own any serving platters. Which is fine. I'm completely okay with serving everything in tupperware containers. Something that our drawers are overflowing with due to the amount of takeout we order and food that my parents send over. It just makes cleaning up easier, right? Right.

I know some people have taken cooking into a form of art or craft. I'm not one of them. Everything I make tastes exactly the same. Bland.... or extremely garlick-y. I seriously don't get much variation in flavour when I cook. My sister thinks it's because I don't use spices. Probably. Also R likes things generally healthy so he always makes special requests for me to take out butter, sugar and salt. I'm also limited to a certain comfort zone when cooking. Pancakes and Eggs? No problem. Spinach Dip? Done to perfection. Nacho Dip. Ditto. Duncan Heinz Chocolate Cake? You got it. A turkey with all the fixin's?

Ha.

I'm not sure R's family realize what they've gotten themselves into. Like I always say, this could all come back and hurt them later! Luckily, we have two bathrooms.

Well, if anybody has any ideas or easy-peasy recipes they want to pass on, I'd appreciate it! I'll leave you with my spinach-dip recipe below. When forwarding recipes, please keep in mind that this is a girl who once had cookies LIQUIFY in the oven; (They went from little cookie balls to mutant ooze after they spent 10 minutes in the oven. I still can't figure out how I managed to do that.) and who, at the age of 20, finally learned the hard way what a clove of garlic meant in a recipe.

On second thought, maybe we should have it catered.

As promised, here is my spinach dip recipe.

Ingredients:
1 package chopped frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 package of Knotts Vegetable Soup mix...pick out all the colourful bits
chopped green onion
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
1 tub of non-fat sour cream
2/3 cup low-fat mayo - optional
1 tbsp lemon juice

Instructions:
Mix it all together and serve with cubed up pumpernickel bread and/or italian bread and/or sourdough bread. Have partner cut up the bread if you are personally incapable of this feat. (I always get R to do this since I am personally incapable of accomplishing it without mashing up the bread)

I've made it so many times now, I've started eye-balling everything, and as long as the sour cream : mayo ratio is mostly right, everything else falls into place. Presentation in a bread bowl is also optional. I don't always do this because A) after you use the bread for the bowl, there isn't much left for dipping, so you pretty much have to buy two loaves to have enough bread and B) when you think about it the bread bowl looks really gross after people have scooped out all the dip. Some people say that after the dip is gone, their guests will rip up the bread bowl and eat it as well. These people perhaps have raccoons for guests.