You Are What You Eat: November 11 through November 30
Streak of not eating inside a restaurant - 979 days and counting (+20)
My new Recipes for the Year: 104 (+7)
M's new Recipes for the Year 23 (+0)
A lot of my recipes this time around were identified to use up food from our CSA. Others were for a little pre-Thanksgiving we hosted for M's parents the weekend before our actual Thanksgiving. Let's start with the CSA vegis:
- We got what is, to the best of my recollection, the very first head romanesco that I've ever seen, let alone eaten. I decided to turn it into a Nutty Roasted Romanesco Curry from Searing for Spice. It was an adequate vegetable curry. We got our second head of romanesco the next week and just roasted it straight, which was a lot better.
- When I signed up for the CSA, everyone told me that I'd get a lot of kale. I like kale, so this would have been fine, but instead the bane of my CSA shares has been Swiss Chard. When I got yet another bunch of chard this year (more than kale!), I decided to really mix it up and went with Swiss Chard Tahini Dip from Bon Appetit. This was actually a pretty solid dip for crudites and crackers, and if I opt to sign up for a CSA again and get swamped with chard I'll probably just make this instead of yet another wilted greens recipe.
- In the second to last week of the CSA, I got my very first batch of Kalettes. While I was searching for recipes, I found a fried kalette, but when it came time to actually make dinner I couldn't find that recipe again. Instead, I modified the Chinese 5 Spice Kale Chips from Diabetes Food Hub to use kalettes. Since kalettes are a combo of kale and Brussels Sprouts, and Brussels Sprouts are made to be roasted, this recipe proved to be a solid appetizer. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to buy kalettes just to make it, but as a flavorful kale chip, it was a winner.
Moving on to pre-Thanksgiving, I made two new sides.
- The first was the Maple Roasted Carrots from Eating Well. I found it via the website, but apparently it was in the January 2018 Eating Well. This predates the "You Are What You Eat" series so if I did make it back then I have no record of it. Maybe that should have been a warning; if I'd liked it I would have clipped the recipe for my cookbooks, and I didn't, so probably I either didn't make it or wasn't impressed. That was pretty much the case here; it was a fine side for Thanksgiving but nothing special at all.
- My family was not a family that did sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving, but M wanted it, so I tapped the modestly named The Best Sweet Potato Casserole from The Food Network. It's the only sweet potato casserole I've made, so I can't vouch for "the best" but I certainly enjoyed it. I don't see me making it outside Thanksgiving though.
In other cooking experiments:
- My mother sent us home from actual Thanksgiving with a stack of photocopied recipes. One was an Italian Sausage & Kale Soup for the crock pot, which sure seems to be this recipe from Taste of Home. My mother said she'd made it for us on a previous visit, but I admit I don't recall it. However, M has informed me that she greatly enjoyed this soup, and I should make it again, so I guess that settles it.
- I returned to the ever shrinking supply of new-to-me recipes in the Moosewood Favorites cookbook and came out with Vegetable-Tofu Lasagna. This was essentially a spinach lasagna, but used the tofu, properly spiced, substituted for the ricotta cheese of a traditional lasagna. Mushrooms were used to cover for the mozzarella cheese. If I made it again, I'd double the amount of both tofu and mushrooms to make it a little more savory, but that's the closest thing I have to a complaint. The tofu, in particular, was really delicious.
A few weeks later we made a more traditional spinach lasagna, and its edge on the Vegetable-Tofu lasagna was actually pretty minimal in the flavor department. The traditional lasagna did win out for ease of cooking by a large margin, so I probably will lean that way unless I have vegan guests.
- Some time back my parents got me a bottle of pecan oil as a birthday gift. OK, it was probably two birthdays ago, and I kept not remembering to use it. Finally, last night I cracked it open to make a very nice Pecan Oil Basic Vinaigrette from the clearly totally unbiased Pecan Oil website, which I presented as a dressing option alongside the traditional lasagna when gieves came over for dinner. I'm not counting it as a new recipe, but I will note that both dressings were new to gieves, and after sampling both she opted for the Pecan Oil Basic Vinaigrette.
My new Recipes for the Year: 104 (+7)
M's new Recipes for the Year 23 (+0)
A lot of my recipes this time around were identified to use up food from our CSA. Others were for a little pre-Thanksgiving we hosted for M's parents the weekend before our actual Thanksgiving. Let's start with the CSA vegis:
- We got what is, to the best of my recollection, the very first head romanesco that I've ever seen, let alone eaten. I decided to turn it into a Nutty Roasted Romanesco Curry from Searing for Spice. It was an adequate vegetable curry. We got our second head of romanesco the next week and just roasted it straight, which was a lot better.
- When I signed up for the CSA, everyone told me that I'd get a lot of kale. I like kale, so this would have been fine, but instead the bane of my CSA shares has been Swiss Chard. When I got yet another bunch of chard this year (more than kale!), I decided to really mix it up and went with Swiss Chard Tahini Dip from Bon Appetit. This was actually a pretty solid dip for crudites and crackers, and if I opt to sign up for a CSA again and get swamped with chard I'll probably just make this instead of yet another wilted greens recipe.
- In the second to last week of the CSA, I got my very first batch of Kalettes. While I was searching for recipes, I found a fried kalette, but when it came time to actually make dinner I couldn't find that recipe again. Instead, I modified the Chinese 5 Spice Kale Chips from Diabetes Food Hub to use kalettes. Since kalettes are a combo of kale and Brussels Sprouts, and Brussels Sprouts are made to be roasted, this recipe proved to be a solid appetizer. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to buy kalettes just to make it, but as a flavorful kale chip, it was a winner.
Moving on to pre-Thanksgiving, I made two new sides.
- The first was the Maple Roasted Carrots from Eating Well. I found it via the website, but apparently it was in the January 2018 Eating Well. This predates the "You Are What You Eat" series so if I did make it back then I have no record of it. Maybe that should have been a warning; if I'd liked it I would have clipped the recipe for my cookbooks, and I didn't, so probably I either didn't make it or wasn't impressed. That was pretty much the case here; it was a fine side for Thanksgiving but nothing special at all.
- My family was not a family that did sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving, but M wanted it, so I tapped the modestly named The Best Sweet Potato Casserole from The Food Network. It's the only sweet potato casserole I've made, so I can't vouch for "the best" but I certainly enjoyed it. I don't see me making it outside Thanksgiving though.
In other cooking experiments:
- My mother sent us home from actual Thanksgiving with a stack of photocopied recipes. One was an Italian Sausage & Kale Soup for the crock pot, which sure seems to be this recipe from Taste of Home. My mother said she'd made it for us on a previous visit, but I admit I don't recall it. However, M has informed me that she greatly enjoyed this soup, and I should make it again, so I guess that settles it.
- I returned to the ever shrinking supply of new-to-me recipes in the Moosewood Favorites cookbook and came out with Vegetable-Tofu Lasagna. This was essentially a spinach lasagna, but used the tofu, properly spiced, substituted for the ricotta cheese of a traditional lasagna. Mushrooms were used to cover for the mozzarella cheese. If I made it again, I'd double the amount of both tofu and mushrooms to make it a little more savory, but that's the closest thing I have to a complaint. The tofu, in particular, was really delicious.
A few weeks later we made a more traditional spinach lasagna, and its edge on the Vegetable-Tofu lasagna was actually pretty minimal in the flavor department. The traditional lasagna did win out for ease of cooking by a large margin, so I probably will lean that way unless I have vegan guests.
- Some time back my parents got me a bottle of pecan oil as a birthday gift. OK, it was probably two birthdays ago, and I kept not remembering to use it. Finally, last night I cracked it open to make a very nice Pecan Oil Basic Vinaigrette from the clearly totally unbiased Pecan Oil website, which I presented as a dressing option alongside the traditional lasagna when gieves came over for dinner. I'm not counting it as a new recipe, but I will note that both dressings were new to gieves, and after sampling both she opted for the Pecan Oil Basic Vinaigrette.