You Are What You Eat: April 21 through May 5
Streak of not eating inside a restaurant - 785 days and counting (+15)
My new Recipes for the Year: 60 (+7)
M's new Recipes for the Year 13 (+4)
As previously announced, Eating Well magazine has gone digital only, so the April 2022 issue is the last paper issue we'll ever get. They substituted in Better Homes & Gardens. Based on a one issue sample size of the latter title, it's useless for cooking, with only 7 recipes all crammed into two features. On top of that, the magazine reads like skimming through social media headlines. Eating Well may have been somewhat repetitive (I lovingly called it "Cosmo for Cooks" because every cover was the same) but at least it had long form writing about all sorts of food related topics. Of course, I'm the weird who still likes magazines. Alas. There are still some new recipes to try in the the three issues for 2022 I have left, but after that this series may get more sporadic. Fortunately, M keeps finding good stuff. Between my 7 new recipes and 4 new recipes, we tried a bunch of new food since last time.
We'll start with M's recipes, which all came from various internet food blogs.
- M started out by making the Butternut Squash Stuffed Shells from Love and Lemons. They tasted pretty good, but like most recipes that stuff things, they were time consuming to make. Even if she bought pre-cut squash to save time, I'm not sure they were good enough to be worth the effort.
- After making the filling to stuff the shells, M still had plenty of squash left so she added Garlic Butter Parmesan Baked Butternut Squash from Eat Well 101 as an appetizer. This was basically roasted squash slices with dressing and some parmesan on top. They got a little soggy; if we were to make them again we might experiment with putting them in the air fryer instead. Solid, but not as good as the stuffed shells that spawned them.
- For her other meal, M went Middle Eastern. First she did the Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Pita from Key Ingredient. The chicken that came out of the slow cooker was very good and once shredded was restaurant quality pita filling.
- Accompanying the pita was a Mediterranean Couscous Salad from Jessica Gavin. The salad featured a lemony dressing over a mix of couscous and vegetables. M notes that she took some liberties with the recipe, but we're both big fans of couscous and this was a winner.
5 of my 7 recipes came from the April 2022 Eating Well. The other two came from Moosewood Favorites and Sitka Salmon Shares.
- The dessert section of Moosewood Favorites is the area with the most recipes that I haven't tried, so I turned my attention to the Cowboy Cookies. These cookies were not dissimilar in size or texture from my preferred chocolate chip cookie recipe, but also included dried cherries and walnuts. We gave a bunch to our friend Beth, and the rest didn't last long here. They were good, but I prefer the chocolate chip bookies.
- Last time I made Coconut-Lime Cashew Crusted Fish from Moosewood Favorites, which went over my personal threshold for too much coconut. This time I went with the Crispy Coconut Crusted Fish Fingers, which was sent along with our last fish shipment from Sitka Salmon Shares. We used a couple nice pieces of rockfish for this recipe, which was much more to my taste. I didn't think that these were dramatically better than any of the other fish finger recipes I've tried over the years, but M wants me to make them again. She also liked the apricot jelly based dipping sauce. Since the coconut wasn't too much for me, I'm not opposed.
- It's hard to go wrong with a salad dressing that includes maple syrup, and indeed the Spinach Salad with Warm Maple Dressing from the April 2022 Eating Well was pleasant enough. Throw in some smoked Gouda and pecans as toppings, and M was a fan.
- An even more successful salad from the same issue was the Collard Green Salad with Peanut Vinaigrette. We went with the kale variant because for this salad you massaged the dressing into the greens, and it seemed easier to massage kale than collards. The fish sauce based dressing was delicious and the salad was hearty with plenty of hard boiled eggs, peanuts and red onion. I really liked this and will make it again.
- Apparently dredging the fish fingers through flour, egg and panko wasn't enough for one week, because I gave the artichokes in the Caesar Salad with Crispy Artichokes from the same issue the same treatment. I left out the anchovy because M still doesn't like anchovies. The end result was a perfectly serviceable caesar salad that wasn't good enough to make again. The fried artichoke hearts were fun but more work than I need to do again.
- The Cheesy Marinara Beans was blandly enjoyable. It wanted to be a bean based quick lasagna, but didn't have enough else going on to be interesting. They really should have mixed in some spinach or something to give it some color and texture. It was perfectly comforting on a chillier night, but once was enough.
- Our last new recipe from the April 2022 Eating Well was the Beef & Bulgur Sloppy Joes, which we obviously had with ground chicken. We enjoyed the end result of this dish, but it wasn't good enough to dislodge our preferred Beef & Bean Sloppy Joes (again, made with chicken) from its perch in our cookbook.
My new Recipes for the Year: 60 (+7)
M's new Recipes for the Year 13 (+4)
As previously announced, Eating Well magazine has gone digital only, so the April 2022 issue is the last paper issue we'll ever get. They substituted in Better Homes & Gardens. Based on a one issue sample size of the latter title, it's useless for cooking, with only 7 recipes all crammed into two features. On top of that, the magazine reads like skimming through social media headlines. Eating Well may have been somewhat repetitive (I lovingly called it "Cosmo for Cooks" because every cover was the same) but at least it had long form writing about all sorts of food related topics. Of course, I'm the weird who still likes magazines. Alas. There are still some new recipes to try in the the three issues for 2022 I have left, but after that this series may get more sporadic. Fortunately, M keeps finding good stuff. Between my 7 new recipes and 4 new recipes, we tried a bunch of new food since last time.
We'll start with M's recipes, which all came from various internet food blogs.
- M started out by making the Butternut Squash Stuffed Shells from Love and Lemons. They tasted pretty good, but like most recipes that stuff things, they were time consuming to make. Even if she bought pre-cut squash to save time, I'm not sure they were good enough to be worth the effort.
- After making the filling to stuff the shells, M still had plenty of squash left so she added Garlic Butter Parmesan Baked Butternut Squash from Eat Well 101 as an appetizer. This was basically roasted squash slices with dressing and some parmesan on top. They got a little soggy; if we were to make them again we might experiment with putting them in the air fryer instead. Solid, but not as good as the stuffed shells that spawned them.
- For her other meal, M went Middle Eastern. First she did the Slow Cooker Greek Chicken Pita from Key Ingredient. The chicken that came out of the slow cooker was very good and once shredded was restaurant quality pita filling.
- Accompanying the pita was a Mediterranean Couscous Salad from Jessica Gavin. The salad featured a lemony dressing over a mix of couscous and vegetables. M notes that she took some liberties with the recipe, but we're both big fans of couscous and this was a winner.
5 of my 7 recipes came from the April 2022 Eating Well. The other two came from Moosewood Favorites and Sitka Salmon Shares.
- The dessert section of Moosewood Favorites is the area with the most recipes that I haven't tried, so I turned my attention to the Cowboy Cookies. These cookies were not dissimilar in size or texture from my preferred chocolate chip cookie recipe, but also included dried cherries and walnuts. We gave a bunch to our friend Beth, and the rest didn't last long here. They were good, but I prefer the chocolate chip bookies.
- Last time I made Coconut-Lime Cashew Crusted Fish from Moosewood Favorites, which went over my personal threshold for too much coconut. This time I went with the Crispy Coconut Crusted Fish Fingers, which was sent along with our last fish shipment from Sitka Salmon Shares. We used a couple nice pieces of rockfish for this recipe, which was much more to my taste. I didn't think that these were dramatically better than any of the other fish finger recipes I've tried over the years, but M wants me to make them again. She also liked the apricot jelly based dipping sauce. Since the coconut wasn't too much for me, I'm not opposed.
- It's hard to go wrong with a salad dressing that includes maple syrup, and indeed the Spinach Salad with Warm Maple Dressing from the April 2022 Eating Well was pleasant enough. Throw in some smoked Gouda and pecans as toppings, and M was a fan.
- An even more successful salad from the same issue was the Collard Green Salad with Peanut Vinaigrette. We went with the kale variant because for this salad you massaged the dressing into the greens, and it seemed easier to massage kale than collards. The fish sauce based dressing was delicious and the salad was hearty with plenty of hard boiled eggs, peanuts and red onion. I really liked this and will make it again.
- Apparently dredging the fish fingers through flour, egg and panko wasn't enough for one week, because I gave the artichokes in the Caesar Salad with Crispy Artichokes from the same issue the same treatment. I left out the anchovy because M still doesn't like anchovies. The end result was a perfectly serviceable caesar salad that wasn't good enough to make again. The fried artichoke hearts were fun but more work than I need to do again.
- The Cheesy Marinara Beans was blandly enjoyable. It wanted to be a bean based quick lasagna, but didn't have enough else going on to be interesting. They really should have mixed in some spinach or something to give it some color and texture. It was perfectly comforting on a chillier night, but once was enough.
- Our last new recipe from the April 2022 Eating Well was the Beef & Bulgur Sloppy Joes, which we obviously had with ground chicken. We enjoyed the end result of this dish, but it wasn't good enough to dislodge our preferred Beef & Bean Sloppy Joes (again, made with chicken) from its perch in our cookbook.