You Are What You Eat: February 1 through February 28
Streak of not eating in a restaurant - 348 days and counting.
Streak of not getting takeout from a restaurant - 43 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 13
With no changes to the restaurant totals from January, we can dive right into the new recipes. While I'm still heavily focused on recipes that have a comparatively minimal amount of active time, there's no reason to avoid new recipes that promise minimal cooking time. This time around I have six new recipes from Eating Well and one from an ingredient package to take the total for the year to thirteen. Here we go in chronological order of the Eating Well issue.
- M's newly hatched sweet tooth continues unabated, so I made the Fresh Apple Squares from the October 2020 Eating Well. This is basically an apple crisp that been crushed down into bar form, but it requires me to buy concentrated apple juice, which is not an ingredient I normally have on hand. Given that apple crisp is easier, makes more and is pretty much just as tasty, I'm not sure this will reappear on our menu.
- The January/February 2021 issue offered up the Creamy Queso Chili, which is a relatively quick to prepare meatless chili with a lot of cheese and cream cheese melted into it. It was solid, not spectacular, but it was also easy enough that it may reappear.
- The January/February 2021 issue also started a new section with them having an Instant Pot recipe (sorry, an Electric Pressure Cooker call out). The first one was a Lebanese dish mixing brown rice, brown lentils and red onions in copious quantities called Instant-Pot Mujadara. It's not dissimilar from the koshari I made last year, but easier. One complaint: it required you to saute onion in the Instant Pot (sorry, Electric Pressure Cooker) for 30 minutes. I just did it on the stove at a higher heat until I got the desired results, which cut the cooking time quite a bit and made it fit in the 20 minute active time window. I'm not sure an authentic Lebanese grandmother would approve, but M and I both really liked it, and we'll definitely make this again, repeatedly.
- I've written about how I doctor macaroni & cheese, so you can imagine how pleased I was when the January/February 2021 Eating Well had an entire page of suggestions on how to doctor a box of macaroni & cheese. Alas, I can't find those recipes online, but I tried two of them, or more accurately, I took my doctored mac & cheese and then added their doctoring suggestions on top of that.
The Spicy Baked Mac added hot sauce, assorted spices, panko and Parmesan cheese to the mix, and baked the whole thing in the oven after mixing it together. It was very nice, although the baking requires extra time. The Green Mac & Cheese added garlic, broccoli and spinach, and is an excellent way to use up extra green vegetables with just a little sauteeing while the pasta cooks. I'll use both again, and there are still three more to try!
- Moving on to the 2021 Eating Well, I made the Roasted Cabbage with Horseradish Cream. M likes cabbage, we both like horseradish, and this makes a nice easy side. Next time I'll buy either a smaller green cabbage or cut it in half and make less per dinner. With that caveat, I enjoyed it, and it's pretty much as easy as "slice, coat in oil, roast for 20 minutes, mix sauce."
- When I was getting the cream cheese for the Cream Queso Chili recipe, I noted that the package of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese has a cheesecake recipe on it. Since we didn't really have any solid plans for Valentine's Day anyway, and I had this spring-form pan that M got me for Hanukkah, I clearly needed to make her the PHILADELPHIA® Classic Cheesecake. This recipe was less complicated than the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake I made her previously, and I enjoyed it greatly. Was it better than the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake? That probably depends on how you feel about pumpkin, and maybe it was just the Valentine's Day ambiance, but I think I liked the Philadelphia better. As my friend Amanda at North Dakota Nice said, "if the recipe is on the package it has been made successfully a few million times." I may have to start evaluating all the recipes on the ingredients in the pantry to find new candidates for dinner.
Beyond the recipes here, M made also two different lactation cookie recipes, but I didn't bake them and I didn't eat them, so I'm not counting them.
Streak of not getting takeout from a restaurant - 43 days and counting.
New Recipes for the Year: 13
With no changes to the restaurant totals from January, we can dive right into the new recipes. While I'm still heavily focused on recipes that have a comparatively minimal amount of active time, there's no reason to avoid new recipes that promise minimal cooking time. This time around I have six new recipes from Eating Well and one from an ingredient package to take the total for the year to thirteen. Here we go in chronological order of the Eating Well issue.
- M's newly hatched sweet tooth continues unabated, so I made the Fresh Apple Squares from the October 2020 Eating Well. This is basically an apple crisp that been crushed down into bar form, but it requires me to buy concentrated apple juice, which is not an ingredient I normally have on hand. Given that apple crisp is easier, makes more and is pretty much just as tasty, I'm not sure this will reappear on our menu.
- The January/February 2021 issue offered up the Creamy Queso Chili, which is a relatively quick to prepare meatless chili with a lot of cheese and cream cheese melted into it. It was solid, not spectacular, but it was also easy enough that it may reappear.
- The January/February 2021 issue also started a new section with them having an Instant Pot recipe (sorry, an Electric Pressure Cooker call out). The first one was a Lebanese dish mixing brown rice, brown lentils and red onions in copious quantities called Instant-Pot Mujadara. It's not dissimilar from the koshari I made last year, but easier. One complaint: it required you to saute onion in the Instant Pot (sorry, Electric Pressure Cooker) for 30 minutes. I just did it on the stove at a higher heat until I got the desired results, which cut the cooking time quite a bit and made it fit in the 20 minute active time window. I'm not sure an authentic Lebanese grandmother would approve, but M and I both really liked it, and we'll definitely make this again, repeatedly.
- I've written about how I doctor macaroni & cheese, so you can imagine how pleased I was when the January/February 2021 Eating Well had an entire page of suggestions on how to doctor a box of macaroni & cheese. Alas, I can't find those recipes online, but I tried two of them, or more accurately, I took my doctored mac & cheese and then added their doctoring suggestions on top of that.
The Spicy Baked Mac added hot sauce, assorted spices, panko and Parmesan cheese to the mix, and baked the whole thing in the oven after mixing it together. It was very nice, although the baking requires extra time. The Green Mac & Cheese added garlic, broccoli and spinach, and is an excellent way to use up extra green vegetables with just a little sauteeing while the pasta cooks. I'll use both again, and there are still three more to try!
- Moving on to the 2021 Eating Well, I made the Roasted Cabbage with Horseradish Cream. M likes cabbage, we both like horseradish, and this makes a nice easy side. Next time I'll buy either a smaller green cabbage or cut it in half and make less per dinner. With that caveat, I enjoyed it, and it's pretty much as easy as "slice, coat in oil, roast for 20 minutes, mix sauce."
- When I was getting the cream cheese for the Cream Queso Chili recipe, I noted that the package of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese has a cheesecake recipe on it. Since we didn't really have any solid plans for Valentine's Day anyway, and I had this spring-form pan that M got me for Hanukkah, I clearly needed to make her the PHILADELPHIA® Classic Cheesecake. This recipe was less complicated than the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake I made her previously, and I enjoyed it greatly. Was it better than the Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake? That probably depends on how you feel about pumpkin, and maybe it was just the Valentine's Day ambiance, but I think I liked the Philadelphia better. As my friend Amanda at North Dakota Nice said, "if the recipe is on the package it has been made successfully a few million times." I may have to start evaluating all the recipes on the ingredients in the pantry to find new candidates for dinner.
Beyond the recipes here, M made also two different lactation cookie recipes, but I didn't bake them and I didn't eat them, so I'm not counting them.