Pico de Gallo and Guacamole

These were the other two things I prepared for our Superbowl party, and they came out just fine - though I find it's pretty hard to mess up guacamole...anything that involves avocados is automatically delicious in my book. I have to agree with Carissa that I like my pico de gallo with more tomatoes than anything else, but Ree's recipe did encourage me to use more cilantro than I usually do, which I ended up liking. The only thing I failed to do was to salt my guacamole enough - and I even followed the rule of tasting it with chips! I'm always afraid of over-salting things, but I'll have to remember to be more bold about that the next time I make this recipe.

Jalapeno Poppers

I made these for our Superbowl party and they were DELISH! A couple of things to note: (1) I used apricot jelly instead of BBQ sauce, and got rave reviews from everyone who tried the poppers. I thought it would be interesting to take Ree's suggestion on that and use something that was purely sweet to balance out the salty and spicy aspects of the poppers, and it worked really well. (2) This next one is a bit weird: If you practice hot yoga or engage in any other activity that involves a lot of sweating, heed Ree's advice about wearing gloves! I thought I could handle the heat and it was a big mistake! Now, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night cursing the name Ree Drummond (as she suggested I might), and actually only experienced some mild burning in the hours after preparing the poppers. But the next day, I went to a hot yoga class and once the sweat started pouring off of me, my left hand was on fire...YE-OUCH! (I held the jalapeños primarily in my left hand while I scooped the insides out with a spoon held in my right, so the extreme burning was confined to that hand.) I guess all of that sweat pushed the remaining toxins out to the surface of my skin. The only slightly good thing I can say about this is that it distracted me from various other painful sensations that usually accompany my yoga classes. Anyway, I can't say for sure that this won't happen to you if you don't do something that makes your palms sweat the day after making the poppers, but it might be best to play it safe and protect your hands. :) (3) Finally, a lot of the poppers stuck to my baking sheet and I had to pry them off, so I will probably use parchment paper the next time I make them.