I am so into sweet potatoes! This sounds so delicious.
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It is so easy, and you really have a lot of flexibility with the ingredients. All of the orange squashes are good here. Enjoy.
I think he just doesnât like its texture. Now that it has no texture it should be fine.
I promise not to poison him.
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Last night, my 24-year-old son made a giant batch of mac & cheese. We use the recipe from the New York Times. If you google NYT âcreamy macaroni and cheeseâ youâll get it. There is no better mac & cheese in this world or any other. Hint: itâs not creamyâit cuts into squares. Itâs the kind we used to get at Julia Green School back when schools had cooks who served real food to children. Make a double recipe and bake for at least twice the time in the recipe.
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YES. The semisolid mac n cheese. A Rice Krispie treat except savory, cheesy, not really crispy, oh LORD.
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I made that Epicurious Chicken recipe too! So delicious!
It was a hard week for cooking, perhaps a good thing I had that sample box from Hello Fresh to check out. I cooked 4 of the 5 meals, all were more than enough for 2 of us. I was hoping the kids would join in but play practice and work got in the way. While I love having everything right there in the box, Iâm looking to get out of my rut. I think we all tend to cook the same ten things over and over with a little variation. A couple years ago my husband and I did a Wellness Challenge and only ate a whole food, vegan diet (so no fake cheese or meat products, nothing packaged with more than 4 ingredients) and that really shook up our cooking. I may have to go back to those recipes this winter.
So Iâm cooking these meals and looking over their recipes for ideas. Last night was a pan roasted chicken breast with Dijon mustard mushroom sauce over whole wheat Israeli cous cous, with arugula on the side (I added a tomato from the garden, last one). Now I already have the whole wheat cous cous, I buy a large bag from Amazon because my supermarket choices are limited here. I can buy it here but it will cost me! But I would simply bake the chicken breast and serve it with the couscous and a salad but it would never occur to me to make a sauce. I will definitely be making variations of this meal. They had me pan roast the two chicken breast pieces and lightly brown them, then bake for 10-11 minutes. I always overcook my chicken breast so this was an eye opener! Then I cooked the garlic and mushrooms in the pan, added water and chicken stock and scraped up the brown bits in the pan and added mustard and sour cream. I had dinner done and the pots washed (only the sauce pan and frying pan and baking tray) within 20 minutes. No joke. We had the arugula with the tomato with a little olive oil and lemon juice.
It was a fun experiment. I liked not having to think about what I was going to cook every night. Other than the first night, because the salmon dish said âcook me firstâ, we had choices. Did we want the chicken, or beef stir fry, or spicy pork and kale soup (so good) or the cauliflower Mac and cheese? We still have the Mac and cheese left. I paid about $45 with the offer I got, but at $90 itâs way too much money for 5 meals. I may do it once in a while for 3 meals or so. I did notice that I am at the end of the week and itâs time to go to the dump today (I know, I really know how to have fun) and I opened the frig to do my weekly toss out and thereâs nothing left to throw out. Normally I have greens gone bad, a soft cucumber and lots of leftover containers because I over cook.
So Iâm going to plan next week ahead of time and see if I can de-stress dinner with what Iâve learned this week and look over the recipes on their website. And then thereâs Thanksgiving to look forward toâŠ
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Dinner last night was the potluck table of snacks at spinning group. The hands down favorite (okay second favorite because multiple bottles were uncorked) was a cookie from Trader Joeâs. This was not an ordinary cookie. You buy the dough, which is already in little balls, and roll it in sugar before baking. It tasted real, people. It did not taste like the cookie dough that comes in tubes with the fluffy dude on the front. If you really wanted to pass these off as homemade, whisk a pinch of cardamom into some raw sugar for the rolling part.
Sometimes dinner has to have cookies and sometimes you are not going to make them from scratch.
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Mulligatawny. Quick and easy, and a favorite with the menfolk around here 
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the movie is surprisingly good!
I like to cook a big meal on the weekends to use over the week, so Kayâs brisket idea sounded good. But no brisket at the store I commonly shop at. What they did have were flanken cut ribs. Iâm used to a thicker cut of short ribs, my mom would take a tubelike package of Manishewitz soup mix with barley and make this awesome soup,stew with it. So I googled the thinner cut and saw it was popular in Korean dishes. I found a marinade of soy sauce, ginger, onion, brown sugar, apple and spices and put that in the fridge for a few hours. Then I roasted some Brussels sprouts, apples and carrots and cooked a barley risotto. I still had my heart set on that barley. I sautĂ©ed some onions and added the barley to them, then added my water mixed with Better than Boullion into it, a cup every ten minutes or so, it took almost an hour but it was delicious! The meat is a little spicy, but still sweet from the apples and brown sugar, and so tender.
Sometimes itâs fun to have just a few ingredients and base the meal all around them!
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This sounds spectacular - do you have a recipe that you use?
Thatâs my favorite recipe but now my husband has decided he doesnât like cumin. Do you think I could just leave it out or does anyone have a suggestion for a substitute?
We ordered in. I had a smoked salmon and mascarpone crepe from a local pace called frescos.
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I kind of wing this. Cube squash, drizzle olive oil, salt, pepper, about two tablespoons of fresh sage leaves rough chopped, a little nutmeg, maybe a generous punch. Spread on a baking sheet and roast at 375 for an hour-ish give or take. When it came out of the oven I dumped on grated manchego and really thin slices of chorizo from the deli, and I happen to know that you live in a town with amazing delicatessens.
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We hosted an AFS exchange student from Kyrgyzstan last year and she taught me to make Plov - a pilaf type dish. I tried making it on my own last night, and it was delicious. Brought back fond memories of Aidana and the fun we had with her. I canât wait to visit her in Kyrgyzstan to try the real thing!
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Last night I roasted butternut, sautĂ©ed delicata squash with onions, and added them to leftover wild rice. Drizzled with age balsamic and called it salad. (Fed KidO butter chicken fromTJâs, and some delicata.) the butternut wasnât flavorful at all, but I ate it. I have a love hate relationship with TJs, hate how much I love it.
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Well, that sounds delicious.
Having done that, you can also chuck some garlic in with a bit of tahini and have squash hummus (much tastier than it sounds) 
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This is very true! I will have to make a stop or two! This sounds so fantastic - and I have a few butternut squash in stock! Thank you!