These come from my Aunt Kathryn, who is always sending me great, not-too-complicated recipes to try.  She always especially has delicious finger food.  Our extended family gatherings are often at her house, and she served these cheese biscuits at our Christmas gift exchange a few years ago.  I try to keep the ingredients for these on hand, as they come together pretty quickly.  They also freeze well, so I usually freeze half the batch for a night when I need a before-dinner snack.

Cheese Date Biscuits

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/2 c sharp cheddar cheese
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t salt
1/4 c milk
1 8 ox package chopped dates

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Beat butter and cheese until well-blended. Mix in flour, salt,and pepper. Add milk. Stir until stiff dough forms. Wrap 1 T dough around 3-4 chopped dates. Cover completely and form into a cylinder or a ball.

Place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake until golden, about fifteen minutes. Serve warm.

Note: If you want to freeze them, bake for about 12-13 minutes and then freeze. Bake for 2-3 minutes (straight from the freezer) to reheat. You can also make the dough up to one day ahead, and keep in the fridge until ready to bake.

More from melting your mouth:
Cheese Straws

So anyway, I promise that pimento cheese is much tastier than it might look in the above photo. If you’re not a Southerner, you may not have heard of this spread, which is extremely easy to make, and is a pretty yummy snack. Since we’ve been exercising more, we’ve found the need to keep more quick and easy snacks or meals on hand, so I made a batch last week. We like to use it to fill celery sticks (so you can tell yourself you’re balancing out the healthiness of mixing cheese with mayo), or spread it on sandwiches. If you’re going to put it on a sandwich, I think it’s much, much better if you toast the sandwich (in a toaster oven, already filled with the spread, so the cheese gets gooey and melty), but there are those in my family that disagree and think it’s better without toasting. Either way, you should give it a try, as it takes all of 10 minutes to whip up a batch.

Pimento Cheese

small jar of pimento peppers
1 lb. medium cheddar cheese (Apparently my grandmother always used blocks of American cheese, but I think I probably prefer the sharper taste of cheddar)
sugar
mayonnaise

Chop pimenotos (I use my food processor). Sprinkle with sugar, a couple tablespoons or so. Add very finely grated cheese. (I use my food processor to grate the cheese onto the pimentos, and then, since I don’t have a fine enough chopping blade, I stick the regular blade back in there and chop it up more finely.) Transfer to a bowl, and mix in some mayonnaise, just enough to hold everything together. (This was probably a few tablespoons or so of mayo, I’m not exactly sure). Spread on crackers, celery sticks, or make into sandwiches.

If there’s one person outside my family — which, not to brag, includes numerous excellent cooks — whose cooking I really admire and am inspired by, it would be our good family friend Kelly Branson. She can do everything from comfort food and cookies to fancy party food, always making it look easy and elegant — and everything is always delicious.

When Matt and I got married, Kelly and her daughter Meg, who I’ve been friends with since I was about 8, hosted a Bridesmaids Brunch for me. With the invitations, they enclosed recipe cards for the guests to fill out, so now I have a wonderful box of recipes from my family and friends. Kelly filled out several cards, and one of them was for her baked ziti with these roasted vegetables. Someday I’ll pass along the recipe for the baked ziti, too, which is delicious, but last weekend I just made these roasted vegetables. As Kelly says, “I could eat these roasted veggies all day – spread on crackers, pizza – cold, hot, yummy, yummy, yummy.”

Recipe after the jump….

Kelly’s Roasted Vegetables

2 red and 2 yellow peppers, seeds and pith removed, cut in large chunks
2 sweet onions – quartered or eighthed
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and crushed
1 package baby bella mushrooms, stemmed
1 eggplant, in 1/2″ slices
2 limes, juiced
1/2 cup + of good olive oil
sea salt

Marinate the vegetables in lime juice, oilve oil, and salt overnight. I usually marinate the vegetables in a gallon sized plastic bag. I add the vegetables to the bag in layers, and shake some sea salt and spread some garlic on top of each layer, then pour the lime juice on top. Usually the vegetables will just barely fit into one bag. You should be pretty generous with the salt, though I have made them too salty. Unfortunately I don’t have a real measurement; after making them a few times I just eyeball it. I then leave the veggies on the counter overnight, turning it over a couple times before I go to bed to redistribute the juice.

Preheat the oven to 375 F and roast the vegetables in a single layer on a cookie sheet for 45 minutes to an hour, until they’re pretty soft but not completely fallen apart. When cool enough to handle, goosh everything together and chop it all up. This makes a bunch, but they’re great in so many ways, I’m sure you won’t mind. Here are some ideas:

• in pasta
• on pizza
• chopped up a little better and served as a spread
• in quiche — I made a delicious one with homemade ricotta (recipe coming!) with the leftovers tonight
• just by themselves, as a side dish or a snack

I’ve had some leftovers from this batch in my fridge for close to a week, and they’re still delicious, so they keep pretty well.

Also from Kelly:

• Butternut Squash Soup