You Are What You Eat: August 5 through August 19
Streak of not eating inside a restaurant - 876 days and counting (+15)
My new Recipes for the Year: 91 (+3)
M's new Recipes for the Year 21 (+4)
This time around, M made four new recipes across two meals, and I made... three new kinds of ice cream. Let's do dessert first.
- I hit up Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for a very nice watermelon sorbet. The non-dairy ice creams are usually faster and easier to make than the more traditional dairy options, and that was true here as well. I suspect that most fruits could be turned into sorbet using this recipe, so that's something to keep in mind for the future.
- For the Ninja Creami, I broke out two new recipes when M's parents were here last weekend. The first was a standard chocolate ice cream, which was enjoyable. The other was a "cinnamon bun,", which was just ok. In general, the best Ninja Creami ice creams are not as good as the worst Jeni's ice creams, and I suspect that I'll unload the Creami at some point sooner than later.
M's recipes were uniformly more interesting. She doesn't count more than once a week, but her new recipes succeed at a much higher rate than mine.
- Earlier this year, M made a delicious Vegan Italian "Chicken" Sandwiches that I was very enthusiastic about. This time around, she did a similar variant from The Candid Appetite. The Chickpea "Meatball" Subs were very good. Slathered in sauce as they were, I'm not sure I would guessed they weren't really meat if you hadn't told me, which makes this a rare exception to my rule that "vegetarian food should not pretend to be meat because it doesn't work." Here, it worked really well. I still slightly preferred the earlier sandwiches a bit more, but the line was close.
- As a side for the subs, M turned to Ambitious Kitchen for another salad. Well, technically the Italian Chopped Brussels Sprouts Salad is a salad, but M shaved the sprouts down really thin and it became more of a slaw. Either way, the homemade Italian dressing elevated this to a higher level. I'm not always as big of a fan of slaws as M is, but this one was delicious.
- We'd just made some really good fish cakes, but M decided to see what else was available in the world of fish cakes and turned to the website of local grocer Heinen's. The Greek Feta Tuna Cakes maybe weren't quite as good as the ones using our expensive Alaskan-caught fish, but they were much faster to make and very good in their own right. Next time, we'll try doing them in the air fryer. These were accompanied by some tzatziki sauce from the The Tortilla Channel, which I'm not counting as a separate recipe.
- To accompany the fish cakes, M turned to Clean Food Crush (terrible name) and made Greek Chickpea Salad. I liked this salad, but as I told M it had a bit too much of something. She speculated that it was the dill, as she likes dill a lot and put in extra. I can't say for sure, but it wasn't quite on point for me. Some tweaking might be necessary.
M noted that she's not always super diligent about following the recipes, but these I'm sure will get you in the same ballpark.
My new Recipes for the Year: 91 (+3)
M's new Recipes for the Year 21 (+4)
This time around, M made four new recipes across two meals, and I made... three new kinds of ice cream. Let's do dessert first.
- I hit up Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams for a very nice watermelon sorbet. The non-dairy ice creams are usually faster and easier to make than the more traditional dairy options, and that was true here as well. I suspect that most fruits could be turned into sorbet using this recipe, so that's something to keep in mind for the future.
- For the Ninja Creami, I broke out two new recipes when M's parents were here last weekend. The first was a standard chocolate ice cream, which was enjoyable. The other was a "cinnamon bun,", which was just ok. In general, the best Ninja Creami ice creams are not as good as the worst Jeni's ice creams, and I suspect that I'll unload the Creami at some point sooner than later.
M's recipes were uniformly more interesting. She doesn't count more than once a week, but her new recipes succeed at a much higher rate than mine.
- Earlier this year, M made a delicious Vegan Italian "Chicken" Sandwiches that I was very enthusiastic about. This time around, she did a similar variant from The Candid Appetite. The Chickpea "Meatball" Subs were very good. Slathered in sauce as they were, I'm not sure I would guessed they weren't really meat if you hadn't told me, which makes this a rare exception to my rule that "vegetarian food should not pretend to be meat because it doesn't work." Here, it worked really well. I still slightly preferred the earlier sandwiches a bit more, but the line was close.
- As a side for the subs, M turned to Ambitious Kitchen for another salad. Well, technically the Italian Chopped Brussels Sprouts Salad is a salad, but M shaved the sprouts down really thin and it became more of a slaw. Either way, the homemade Italian dressing elevated this to a higher level. I'm not always as big of a fan of slaws as M is, but this one was delicious.
- We'd just made some really good fish cakes, but M decided to see what else was available in the world of fish cakes and turned to the website of local grocer Heinen's. The Greek Feta Tuna Cakes maybe weren't quite as good as the ones using our expensive Alaskan-caught fish, but they were much faster to make and very good in their own right. Next time, we'll try doing them in the air fryer. These were accompanied by some tzatziki sauce from the The Tortilla Channel, which I'm not counting as a separate recipe.
- To accompany the fish cakes, M turned to Clean Food Crush (terrible name) and made Greek Chickpea Salad. I liked this salad, but as I told M it had a bit too much of something. She speculated that it was the dill, as she likes dill a lot and put in extra. I can't say for sure, but it wasn't quite on point for me. Some tweaking might be necessary.
M noted that she's not always super diligent about following the recipes, but these I'm sure will get you in the same ballpark.