Y’all know I’m from Oklahoma, right? I grew up eating cowboy caviar, also called Texas caviar. It’s a classic bean salad recipe popular in the South. You can serve it as a side salad or as salsa. Either way, people go crazy for cowboy caviar at potlucks.

Cowboy caviar is made with black-eyed peas and black beans, chopped tomatoes, corn, bell pepper, onion and cilantro tossed in tangy Italian dressing. I typically think of cowboy caviar as a warm weather salad, but it’s made with ingredients that are readily available year-round.

Cowboy caviar is actually perfect for New Year’s if you’re craving something fresh yet hearty, and trying to hit your black-eyed pea quota!

I have one issue with most cowboy caviar recipes—they’re often swimming in store-bought Italian salad dressing. As such, they can be way too oily and contain some unnecessary preservatives. Instead, I whisked together a simple, homemade Italian dressing from scratch. It’s easy to do and tastes fantastic.

This recipe yields a big bowl of dip, but I don’t think you’ll have any trouble polishing it off. I hope you enjoy this cheekily titled delight!

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Do you have room for some honey butter on your holiday table? Let’s make some! Honey butter is creamy and utterly irresistible. It’s sweet and a little bit salty, which always sends me back for more. It looks dazzling on the table, and it makes everyone’s eyes light up.

In fact, honey butter is so easy to make that you can whip it up for a special dinner any time of year. Start with softened butter and it’s ready in five minutes or less.

This recipe tastes extra-special thanks to a little sprinkle of cinnamon. Finish it with a little drizzle of honey and a light sprinkle of salt for bonus points in flavor and visual appeal.

I’m telling you, if you’re looking for a last-minute holiday meal menu item, definitely bring honey butter. It’s not a cop-out contribution; it’s a revelation!

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This blue cheese dip just might convert blue cheese skeptics into fans. Yes, it really might. You can trust me on this because I’m a little iffy on blue cheese myself. Sometimes I love blue cheese, like in this peach and avocado salad, and sometimes it’s just too much.

In this dip, it’s perfect. This blue cheese dip recipe is cold, creamy, and savory with an unmistakeable—but not overpowering—blue cheese funk. It’s easy to stir together and tastes even better after a brief rest.

In addition to blue cheese (try a mild one, like gorgonzola), you’ll need just a few basic ingredients to make this dip: sour cream or Greek yogurt, chives or green onion, fresh garlic, salt and pepper. Rarely do I suggest Greek yogurt as a worthy alternative to sour cream, but it really works here and yields a lighter dip. For a different flavor profile altogether, try feta cheese instead of blue.

Serve your dip with Buffalo Cauliflower, or simply with raw vegetables like celery, carrot and bell pepper. Please let me know how you like it in the comments!

Watch How to Make Blue Cheese Dip

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This buffalo cauliflower recipe has been a long time coming. I’m glad to get it to you just before the big game! This recipe is a vegetarian spin on buffalo wings, featuring caramelized roasted cauliflower with an irresistibly spicy coating. It’s the perfect watch party appetizer.

Restaurant-style buffalo cauliflower is typically deep fried (and delicious), but I wanted to make homemade buffalo cauliflower in the oven. I tried it every which way to get here, and many renditions were simply not good. The cauliflower was either soggy, too saucy, too salty, or otherwise not quite right.

I gave up on the idea last year after I landed on buffalo Brussels sprouts instead.

Here’s what I ran into along the way. Many homemade buffalo cauliflower recipes feature cauliflower tossed in a flour and water mixture before baking, with the promise that it produces a deep fried effect. It would be cool if that worked, but it doesn’t. Simply roasting the cauliflower on its own doesn’t yield crispy-enough results, and tossing the cauliflower in sauce after baking negates all crispness anyway.

I finally picked up a new tip from a loosely-written Bon Appetit recipe—cornstarch. Cornstarch helps make my baked sweet potato fries extra crispy, and it does the same for this cauliflower, offering a crispy outside to a high-moisture vegetable without frying. That means that this recipe is gluten free as well. Hooray!

It’s way too easy to eat this buffalo cauliflower straight off the sheet pan before it makes it to the serving platter. You have been warned.

Watch How to Make Buffalo Cauliflower

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Have you tried the baked feta pasta that took the internet by storm earlier this year? That simple recipe inspired this delicious summer dip, which features some of my very favorite flavors—creamy feta, tangy cherry tomatoes, olives and plenty of fresh basil.

Baking these ingredients together near the heat source yields maximal flavor. The feta softens and turns golden, the cherry tomatoes burst and naturally sweeten, and the olives become even more intensely olive-y. Swirled together and finished with a generous sprinkle of basil, the combination is sublime.

This dish also bears a resemblance to a classic Greek dish called feta fournou, or baked feta. That dish typically features feta with bell pepper, tomato and oregano.

The flavors in today’s dip are also delicious raw, as you’ve seen in my Mediterranean Tomato & Feta Dip—make that one if you don’t want to turn on the oven! Either one will be a perfect light meal or summer evening appetizer.

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Are you familiar with esquites? Also known as elote en vaso, esquites are an experience you’ll remember. Esquites are Mexican street corn (elote) cut off the cob, served in salad form.

Esquites are creamy, tangy, spicy, sweet and savory all at once. In other words, they’re completely irresistible. This elote recipe was the best recipe to come off our grill last summer, and I’m excited to share this stovetop variation with you.

Esquites share the same ingredients with elote: fresh corn, mayonnaise, cilantro, chili powder, lime and crumbled Cotija cheese. The combination is sublime, and this variation is much easier to eat. I’ve enjoyed both options in Mexico City and love making them at home. I’m going to cook this simple salad all summer and through the rest of the year.

Esquites have one strong cooking advantage over elote—you can start with frozen corn kernels, which really cuts down on preparation time! We’ll just cook the frozen corn in a hot skillet until it’s seared and delicious. If you’re using frozen corn, you can prepare this dish in about twenty minutes, from start to finish.

Watch How to Make Esquites

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I’m super excited to share this queso recipe with you. This Mexican dip is cheesy, creamy and full of fresh flavor. It’s surprisingly easy to make and utterly irresistible.

This recipe uses a simple secret ingredient—cream cheese—to achieve its gloriously creamy texture and light tang. No flour and no fussy roux required here (as a bonus, this queso is gluten free).

This stovetop queso possesses all of Velveeta’s positive attributes, but it tastes a million times nicer. It even cools down with grace, developing just a slight skin on top that really doesn’t detract from its appeal.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t need an excuse to eat queso while sipping a margarita. I grew up around a lot of Tex-Mex food and like to consider myself a queso connoisseur. If queso is on the menu, I’ve likely sampled it.

My husband, on the other hand, exercises an impressive amount of restraint when it comes to queso. He tells me he doesn’t like it. (He’s generally a rational man, though I question him in cheese-related matters.) This queso is an exception to his rule. He loves it.

We both agree that this is the best queso we’ve ever had. Try it, and I hope you’ll say the same!

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Buffalo sauce on Brussels sprouts? Yes. Yes indeed, a very good idea. I only thought to try this combination after, oh, eight failed attempts at buffalo cauliflower. (I think I’ve just figured out the trick to that one, but trust me, you’ll definitely want to give these sprouts a try this weekend.)

These buffalo Brussels sprouts are a fantastic Super Bowl appetizer. They’re fresh and irresistibly spicy at the same time. You can have your fill of these and feel good about it later.

This recipe starts off with a base of golden, roasted Brussels sprouts drizzled with a simple, three-ingredient homemade buffalo sauce. Top them off with ripe avocado or blue cheese (your choice, both optional) and fresh herbs.

These sprouts will offer some balance to a full-blown snack spread. I hope you love them as much as I do!

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Confession: I brought a sad cheese plate to last year’s Friendsgiving, and it went ignored in the corner. It was an embarrassing moment for a cookbook author, and I’ve been determined to improve my cheese board game ever since.

I walked into the party to find a gorgeous and elaborate cheese board nearly spanning the full length of the dinner table. My friend Jordan has a degree in sculpture, and she can sure put together a beautiful cheese board.

I took the opportunity to study her design. I can’t say that my efforts are quite to her level yet, but I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks to share with you today.

Building a beautiful cheese board feels like a fun art project. We’ll mix different flavors, colors, shapes and textures to build an enticing appetizer board. Give yourself some time to put it together, and you’ll enjoy the process all the more. The trick is to fill every little space on the board with nuts and fruit so it looks completely abundant.

A cheese board is the perfect excuse to break out your special serving items. If you don’t have a dedicated cheese board in your cabinets, though, don’t fret. For your base, you can use a nice wooden cutting board, a large serving platter, or even a tray or baking sheet covered with parchment paper. If you don’t have a set of cheese knives, offer butter knives, cocktail forks, cocktail picks or toothpicks.

Basically, anything goes, and no occasion is too minor for a cheese board. You just might have everything you need at home already. How about a cheese board with your French 75 this evening?

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Olive lovers, tapenade is for you! Tapenade is an olive spread or dip hailing from the Provence region in France. It’s bold, zippy, briny and salty, though we’ll be sure to keep the salt level in check.

Served with crostini or crackers, tapenade is a wonderful appetizer with drinks. It offers some welcome contrast when served with creamy dips, like hummus or spinach artichoke dip. You can also spread it onto sandwiches, dollop it onto salads, and more. Tapenade will keep for a week or two in the fridge, so you’ll find many uses for it.

Tapenade is named after the Provençal word for capers, tapenas. Over the years, olives have become the predominant ingredient, and I used capers as a subtle accent. Similar olive spreads have been served in the Mediterranean for ages, which is why tapenade is a natural pairing with your favorite Mediterranean flavors.

Traditional tapenade also includes anchovies, but being vegetarian, I omitted them. This dip is loaded with complex flavor regardless, and it’s suitable for vegans and those with shellfish allergies as well.

To make this easy tapenade, you’ll need just a few basic ingredients and a food processor. It comes together in about 10 minutes with mostly pantry ingredients! You’ll need Castelvetrano and Kalamata olives, fresh parsley, capers, olive oil, garlic and lemon juice. Let’s make some already.

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