You Are What You Eat: February 11 through February 24
Streak of not eating in a restaurant - 715 days and counting (+14)
New Recipes for the Year: 29 (+9)
It was a busy two weeks with eight new recipes from an assortment of sources. It also brought with it the news that Eating Well is having its print run discontinued, with the April issue the last to arrive in paper. I don't have any interest whatsoever in a digital magazine, so I guess I'll be digging deeper into that giant pile of cookbooks or finding another cooking magazine to read. Either way, the two Eating Wells I have in the house now and the forthcoming April issues will be the last ones to appear in this series. Given that I've been subscribed to that magazine for well over a decade thanks to my mother, this is a major life shift. Maybe I'll have to snag some of their cookbooks or something.
In that vein, let's start with the four new recipes from various issues of Eating Well I made this time around.
- The first recipe from the March 2022 Eating Well that crossed my kitchen counter was the Chicken Tinga. We used it to make tacos. Not only did we both like it, but I was moved to text my sister that night recommending the dish instead of waiting for her to read this (waves). I'm pretty confident I can modify it to be made in an InstantPot, but even if I can't, it's still relatively easy to let simmer on the stove for the requisite amount of time. The recipe included suggestions on what to do with leftovers, but we didn't have enough to worry about that.
- We followed that up with a quick and easy side salad from the same issue, the Sesame-Garlic Spinach Salad. It's fast, especially if you chop the carrots instead of grating them, and it has plenty of garlic and sesame seeds, which are both winners at this house. It can't be a full meal, but it makes a nice side.
- The January/February 2022 Eating Well had a Chicken Stew with Collard Greens & Peanuts in it. It was fine, but M noted that I have other chicken and peanut stews that were better than this one.
- The Sweet Heat Salmon from the April 2021 Eating Well takes jam and jalapenos and makes a salmon topping that is really tasty. We used the last of my supply of my mother's home made jelly, and it was delicious. It probably won't be as good with the store bought stuff, but I'm sure we'll cope.
- Our CSF gave us sablefish. I'd never made sablefish before, so we turned to the CSF's website and made a nice and easy Pan Seared Sablefish with Lemon Pepper Aioli. For greens, we used up the last of the collards from the earlier chicken stew recipe. Throw in some baked potatoes and we had an appropriately filled plate. Did I mention that my wife loves sauces? I didn't make the aioli from scratch but instead used the shortcut in the recipe, and it was still very good.
- Moosewood Favorites gave us the Thai Noodle Salad, which is a pasta salad with a Thai-inspired sauce. We served it with some Thai Baked Tofu from the same cookbook, which we've made before. In general, I'm not usually blown away by pasta salads, but this one seemed appealing. When I made it... I was not blown away. Oh well.
- For Valentine's Day, I made a batch of Buckeye State Ice Cream from the Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. It was very good, I'd happily make it again, and yet it was somehow still not as good as an of the other flavors I've made from that cookbook to date. In short, I'm digging that cookbook.
For those who are curious, we also had M's favorite Pan-Grilled Sea Scallops for Valentine's Day, and it was still great.
- We had extras of most of the ice cream ingredients, so I went ahead and made the Roasted Strawberry & Buttermilk Ice Cream from that same cookbook. One caveat - due to a failure to read the instructions, I boiled the buttermilk with the rest of the ingredients instead of throwing it in at the end before churning. It was still very good, but I'll have to make it again to see if it's better when I follow the instructions properly.
- For Christmas, M's parents got us a mini waffle maker suitable for making waffle bowls to go along with the ice cream cookbooks. Clearly, we needed to try that out. We used the basic "Classic Waffle Bowl" from the cookbook that accompanied the waffle maker. Sure enough, it makes very good waffle bowls perfect for filling with ice cream. In fact, it makes a ridiculous number of them. A glance at the recipe showed that it was going to make far too much for two people, so I cut it down to 2/3 of the ingredients, and that yielded ten bowls. Fortunately, they stayed good in a sealed container. We'll definitely do this again when we have people over, preferably by making the bowls ahead of time. There are also flavors (mostly ones with far more sugar) in the cookbook, so maybe we'll branch out to recipes like the "Snickerdoodle Waffle Bowl."
New Recipes for the Year: 29 (+9)
It was a busy two weeks with eight new recipes from an assortment of sources. It also brought with it the news that Eating Well is having its print run discontinued, with the April issue the last to arrive in paper. I don't have any interest whatsoever in a digital magazine, so I guess I'll be digging deeper into that giant pile of cookbooks or finding another cooking magazine to read. Either way, the two Eating Wells I have in the house now and the forthcoming April issues will be the last ones to appear in this series. Given that I've been subscribed to that magazine for well over a decade thanks to my mother, this is a major life shift. Maybe I'll have to snag some of their cookbooks or something.
In that vein, let's start with the four new recipes from various issues of Eating Well I made this time around.
- The first recipe from the March 2022 Eating Well that crossed my kitchen counter was the Chicken Tinga. We used it to make tacos. Not only did we both like it, but I was moved to text my sister that night recommending the dish instead of waiting for her to read this (waves). I'm pretty confident I can modify it to be made in an InstantPot, but even if I can't, it's still relatively easy to let simmer on the stove for the requisite amount of time. The recipe included suggestions on what to do with leftovers, but we didn't have enough to worry about that.
- We followed that up with a quick and easy side salad from the same issue, the Sesame-Garlic Spinach Salad. It's fast, especially if you chop the carrots instead of grating them, and it has plenty of garlic and sesame seeds, which are both winners at this house. It can't be a full meal, but it makes a nice side.
- The January/February 2022 Eating Well had a Chicken Stew with Collard Greens & Peanuts in it. It was fine, but M noted that I have other chicken and peanut stews that were better than this one.
- The Sweet Heat Salmon from the April 2021 Eating Well takes jam and jalapenos and makes a salmon topping that is really tasty. We used the last of my supply of my mother's home made jelly, and it was delicious. It probably won't be as good with the store bought stuff, but I'm sure we'll cope.
- Our CSF gave us sablefish. I'd never made sablefish before, so we turned to the CSF's website and made a nice and easy Pan Seared Sablefish with Lemon Pepper Aioli. For greens, we used up the last of the collards from the earlier chicken stew recipe. Throw in some baked potatoes and we had an appropriately filled plate. Did I mention that my wife loves sauces? I didn't make the aioli from scratch but instead used the shortcut in the recipe, and it was still very good.
- Moosewood Favorites gave us the Thai Noodle Salad, which is a pasta salad with a Thai-inspired sauce. We served it with some Thai Baked Tofu from the same cookbook, which we've made before. In general, I'm not usually blown away by pasta salads, but this one seemed appealing. When I made it... I was not blown away. Oh well.
- For Valentine's Day, I made a batch of Buckeye State Ice Cream from the Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home. It was very good, I'd happily make it again, and yet it was somehow still not as good as an of the other flavors I've made from that cookbook to date. In short, I'm digging that cookbook.
For those who are curious, we also had M's favorite Pan-Grilled Sea Scallops for Valentine's Day, and it was still great.
- We had extras of most of the ice cream ingredients, so I went ahead and made the Roasted Strawberry & Buttermilk Ice Cream from that same cookbook. One caveat - due to a failure to read the instructions, I boiled the buttermilk with the rest of the ingredients instead of throwing it in at the end before churning. It was still very good, but I'll have to make it again to see if it's better when I follow the instructions properly.
- For Christmas, M's parents got us a mini waffle maker suitable for making waffle bowls to go along with the ice cream cookbooks. Clearly, we needed to try that out. We used the basic "Classic Waffle Bowl" from the cookbook that accompanied the waffle maker. Sure enough, it makes very good waffle bowls perfect for filling with ice cream. In fact, it makes a ridiculous number of them. A glance at the recipe showed that it was going to make far too much for two people, so I cut it down to 2/3 of the ingredients, and that yielded ten bowls. Fortunately, they stayed good in a sealed container. We'll definitely do this again when we have people over, preferably by making the bowls ahead of time. There are also flavors (mostly ones with far more sugar) in the cookbook, so maybe we'll branch out to recipes like the "Snickerdoodle Waffle Bowl."