Hi!

I'm Whitney. Welcome to my little slice of the Internet, where I talk about life in Seattle and our travels beyond it. I have a handsome husbro I may have met outside of a bar, two crazy felines, and two kiddos, too. It’s a lot, so I’m not always spending as much time here as I’d like. Do you like reality TV, sampling all the products, and pickled veggies? Same! 

I'm so glad  you're here. 

Watching Raz Cook - Hot and Spicy Buffalo Shrimp Dip

New year, new recipes! Raz and I hosted our first Christmas dinner and while it was certainly different sitting around my great grandmother's table at our first home (!!!!) instead of at the kids' table with my cousins (yes, there's so many of us, I still sit at the kids' table and it's amaze), having Christmas dinner at our house brought with it some unique benes:
  1. I didn't have to be a slave to turkey - my fam really loves turkey for all holidays. We had prime rib and the men at Costco were hyphy when we were shopping for the perfect cut - turns out it's a dude's club when it comes to the Costco beef section
  2. We got to incorporate some of our favorite traditions while we created new ones (nice to see you again, broccoli casserole...goodbye grandma's Folgers coffee)
  3. We watched Suprima and HJP have one hell of a time with all the Christmas wrappings (and their millions of new toys/rats). Pray for our actual human babies. Two weeks later, we finally cleaned up the rat battleground that is our empty living room and had to have scooped up at least a dozen
And after all that, we tried for a little more routine. Since we're really embracing our old age/place in life (I was made for sweatshirts and cat phone cases), we're doing a lot more dinners with our couple friends and spending much less time drinking in the cold and paying for cabs home. Not that we were really doing that anymore, but still. Like we're considering joining wine clubs and have VARIETAL PREFERENCES. We are becoming adults. It's like I'm finally living my truth again for the first time since I was 15 and emotionally abusing my parents for making me move to Idaho but really spending all my weekends with them on the couch eating ice cream and watching movies because they were still my favorite people even if they did inadvertently ruin my life.

SO, BEHOLD. Raz's latest, which was a huge hit - hot and spicy buffalo shrimp dip, adapted from Skinny Taste/Raz's mom.


Hot and Spicy Buffalo Shrimp Dip
Skinnytaste.com
Serves: 9 (Per usual, four of us ate almost all of it) 

Ingredients:
·         Cooking spray (We used Pam)
·         4 oz reduced fat cream cheese, softened (we didn’t soften ours enough – leave it out on the counter for a half hour before you start, at least)
·         1/2 cup reduced fat sour cream
·         1/2 cup Franks hot sauce (we used his buffalo version – def recommend)
·         1 tsp white wine vinegar
·         2 cups (12.5 oz) cooked peeled large shrimp, diced
·         3/4 cup reduced fat Sargento Mexican blend (we used Tillamook extra sharp cheddar)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°. Lightly spray an 8 x 8 or 9 x 9 baking dish, or even a pie dish with cooking spray.

Combine the first 4 ingredients together and 1/4 cup of the cheese; mix until smooth.


Add the shrimp; mix well and put in a small oven safe dish.

Bake in the oven until hot, about 20-25 minutes.



You can serve with veggies like shown here, or you can be fat kids and get the Fritos scoops like we did. And if you haven't had Fritos in a while, they taste like the best part of middle school aside from blow up chairs and Roxy tees. Also, rationalize it by all the football games on TV. It is the "skinny" version, after all. Random aside: Remember chili cheese Fritos? I will be searching those down next.

Happy New Year, everyone! I am choosing to forgo resolutions in favor of a 2015 vision board. More to come.

All photos skinnytaste.com (we didn't take any because we were too busy eating).

The Baby Shower Next Door

FIL's 50th