How to Make Stuffed Fresh Vegetables With Herbed Cream Cheese

With late spring and summer comes a variety of fresh vegetables. You can find celery, tomatoes in a variety of sizes and kinds, green bell peppers or the sweeter yellow and red ones, cucumbers, broccoli florets and carrots. Fresh vegetables are not only readily available at the grocers, you find vegetables being sold at roadside stands, at the homes of gardeners, or at open farmers markets and often for a lower price. What better to serve them up for friends and family than to make any number of dips and fillers. And what better way to serve up a nutritional snack for the kids.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Medium sized non porous metal or glass mixing bowl
• Rubber Spatula or Wooden Mixing Spoon
• Cutting board or cabinet top
• Food chopper or food processor for mincing the onion
• Large platter or plate
• 1 tub of whipped lite cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaves
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh leaf parsley with the
• stems removed
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh onion
• fresh vegetables for dipping or filling

1. Rinse the fresh herbs in cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. Using a cutting board or clean counter top, chop the fresh herbs with the exception of the onion. Mince the onion.
2. Open the tub of lite whipped cream cheese and taking the rubber spatula, run it around the edge of the container to loosen the cream cheese and empty it into the mixing bowl. Add the lemon juice and mix.
3. Add the fresh herbs and the minced onion, folding them into the cream cheese in the mixing bowl until the herbs are thoroughly mixed in.
4. Using the rubber spatula put the mixture into a serving dish or other glass or ceramic bowl for dipping. Cover with cellophane or tin foil and refrigerate for thirty minutes to an hour so the fresh herbs and onion have time to flavor the cream cheese.
5. Remove any stems, etc. from the vegetables you have selected. Peel carrots with a carrot peeler if you do not purchase carrots that have already been peeled as carrot peel if bitter.
6. Remove celery leaves, separate each piece from the stalk, and cut off the wide white or lighter green part at the bottom. Cut them into short pieces. You may choose to stuff the inside of the celery pieces rather than dip them. (Stuffed celery is good by itself or served with lunch or dinner).
7. Put the fresh vegetables on a plate. Remove the herbed cream cheese from the refrigerator. If you have a lazy Susan or large round platter sit the dip in the center and surround with the vegetables and serve.

Tips & Warnings

• To help prevent your eyes from tearing and burning from the juices in an onion when dicing, slicing, chopping, or mincing it by hand, put the onion on a cutting board and cut off one slice. Make several incisions in the onion and soak in cold water for fifteen or twenty minutes.
• If you have a child under the age of six, do not let them have cherry tomatoes, they can be a choking hazard as most children like to pop them in their mouths whole.