Our Year in Food: 2023

Here we are at the end of another year, and it was another year of not updating nearly as much as we should have. 2023 brought a lot of difficult times, but also a lot to be thankful for, including being able to continue on our adventures and explorations through food as a family. At the close of the year, a look back at what was our 2023.

The first restaurant meal we ate in 2023: Technically, it was takeout from McDonald's on New Year's Day after a visit to urgent care, but since I don't count McDonald's in these recaps (or it would be the answer to many of these and therefore not a very interesting recap other than trying to figure out just how much we spent at McDonald's over the past year), the first would be a delivery order from local Palestinian restaurant, Ayat. We love their babaghanoush, kibbeh, and other appetizers, but are sad they no longer offer the oven pies (the pizza slice in the photo) for delivery from this location. Our first meal dining out as a family didn't come until halfway through the month at one of our South Indian favorites, Saravanaa Bhavan (delicious).

The first home-cooked meal we ate in 2023: Grilled Oaxaca cheese sandwiches for lunch on the second day of the year (mostly because we wanted to use up our leftover Oaxaca cheese from the tlayudas). Dinner that day was cotechino con lenticchie, the traditional Italian New Year's dish, but unfortunately thinking about that just reminds me of how we rushed through dinner and then took B to the hospital for his illness.

The last restaurant meal we ate in 2023: Excluding the donuts we brought home for snack on New Year's Eve, it would be a belated birthday dinner for my mom at Lobo Loco, where we enjoyed some fajitas, quesadillas, tacos, and fries. We were thankful to find another safe restaurant for B's allergies.

The last home-cooked meal we ate in 2023: A random assortment of pre-made appetizers along with air-fried potato pancakes from a mix and some Chinese vegetables for New Year's Eve dinner, but fully from scratch would be risotto with peas, pancetta, and mushrooms that started from the risi e bisi recipe I used for a challenge this year.

# of different restaurants we tried in 2023 (together and separate): 123 in person and 49 for takeout/delivery. These numbers seem back near 2019 levels, which is probably a good reflection of where we are as a society right now as well.

Places explored (outside the NYC metro area): Washington, DC; Arlington, VA (and a few other spots in Northern Virginia); Goshen, NY (and nearby towns); Beacon, NY; Chicago, IL.

Most frequented restaurant of 2023 (together, in person): If you exclude McDonald's (visit number in the double digits), it would be the Wendy's that we would go to on our Target and BJ's trips, which came in with 7 visits. If you exclude fast food, it would be Bricks Restaurant in Goshen, NY, the hotel restaurant at the Legoland Resort, because they had daily breakfast included, plus we had a couple dinners there during torrential downpours. If you want someplace local that is not fast food, it would be Ayat (mentioned above) with 3.

The massive family-style breakfasts at Bricks

Most frequented restaurant of 2023 (takeout or delivery): We ordered far less delivery this year, so if you exclude all our McDonald's orders to go (not even going to count how many those were), it would be a tie between the same Wendy's (we had a lot of breakfasts in the car on the way to BJ's) and Cloudy Donuts, the vegan donut spot in Brooklyn Heights that we love. Their donuts, cinnamon rolls, cookies, everything are amazing.

Cloudy Donuts!

Progress on Around the World Cooking Challenge: Starting with Angola (unit 8) in the new year, which means we've gone through Afghanistan, Alabama, Alaska, Albania, Algeria (although I still have a couple desserts I didn't make yet and keep forgetting about), American Samoa/Samoa, and Andorra. We've definitely made some progress this year, which means there's a lot of posts that still have to be written/finished.

Pani popo (Samoan coconut rolls)

(We didn't post about any new or past WorldEats restaurants this year, so last year's numbers are still valid.)

Favorite overall meal of 2023: Dinner at Tupelo Honey in Arlington, Virginia on our spring break trip to DC. The service was fantastic, both while there and in advance when we were inquiring about allergens, and the food was delicious. We got the honey-dusted fried chicken, blackened mahi-mahi, sides of grits with goat cheese, braised green beans, and crispy brussels sprouts, and everything was fantastic. B loved his massive grilled cheese sandwich, and we started with their signature cathead buttermilk biscuits with whipped butter and blueberry jam, which were also special for another reason. I had done a Zoom session through Yelp learning about how to make those during the height of the pandemic, and it was so nice to finally try them in person (obviously better than mine). There was so much on the menu that we could order without any modifications that would be safe for B, and it felt so good to have a nice dinner out that was also safe. Truly wonderful dinner and our favorite meal for this year.

Wishing you a wonderful 2024!

40s (2023)

Time for some challenges from the weeks in the 40s!

Week 44 - Halloween

I'm not big into "decorative" food (kind of lacking in artistic ability), so I wasn't sure what to make for this challenge. A lot of internet searching led me to a Food Network recipe for white ghost pizzas, and that seemed doable so I went with that. Of course, Trader Joe's didn't have any plain pizza dough that week, so we ended up with garlic and herb pizza dough (which we normally like, but this was for ghosts). I consider this a semi-fail not because of that, but because of my inability to truly shape them as ghosts. The pizzas were topped with an olive oil and garlic base, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, and some black olives for eyes. They tasted good, but I don't need to make these misshapen ghosts again.

Week 45 - drying

Another theme I wasn't especially excited about, because I had no intention of dehydrating food, and most of the already-dried food I could think of was fruit, meaning I had to mix fruit with savory, not my favorite flavor profile. I eventually settled on a caramelized onion and fig pizza from Taste of Home, which sounded like a good combination using dried fruit. The pizza had a cream cheese-olive oil-thyme base (which was useful, because I had a block of cream cheese in the fridge that I needed to use), and it was topped with caramelized onions (one giant onion I got from TJ's), chopped sun-dried figs, prosciutto, pine nuts, and cheese (quattro formaggi from TJ's). The combination was good, but other than pineapples (and I guess banana curry pizza), I still prefer my pizza without fruit.

Week 46 - gourds

I chose a bit of an easier route for the gourds challenge, opting to use canned pumpkin, and make a pumpkin pasta bake from Skinnytaste. It was a recipe we had tried before, mixing in some greens and canned pumpkin, and topped with breadcrumbs and cheese. I don't know where my head was at that night, because for some reason I threw on the breadcrumbs before the cheese instead of the other way around, which just wasn't as good. Lesson learned for next time.

Week 48 - grains

The grains challenge came up right around the time we needed to use up some just-expired wild rice in our pantry, so this wild rice stuffing from Iowa Girl Eats was perfect. I had tried using some of the wild rice blend previously on its own, following the package directions, and it was too crunchy and seemed undercooked despite doing everything we were supposed to do. I was kind of dreading making more of it in case the same thing happened, but this recipe was just right. The rice texture was great, chewy but cooked enough, and with lots of flavor thanks to everything added in (bacon, shallots, mushrooms, celery, cranberries, walnuts, and cheese). I would absolutely make this again.

Week 49 - clear

When I think clear, I think soup (also jello and broth, it hasn't been that long since my colonoscopy diet), and one of my favorite soups of all time is Italian wedding soup. I thought trying a new recipe for that would be perfect here, especially with the colder weather setting in. There was a wedding soup recipe on Once Upon a Chef, a site I have found good luck with before, that sounded a little different since it combined ground beef (used Impossible) and sweet Italian sausage (we had one in the freezer already) with garlic, herbs, cheese, and breadcrumbs for the meatballs. It really did make for some flavorful meatballs that were excellent both on their own and in the soup. Looking forward to making this again soon.

Week 50 - root vegetables

Back in 2015, I made a loaded baked potato salad based on a FoodieCrush recipe for the picnic food challenge, but since I wasn't officially participating back then, this root vegetables challenge seemed like a great time for the recipe to make a return. It has been years now since I made it, but it was just as good as I remembered. It could have used a little bit more bacon (some of ours was too overdone) and maybe some more cheese too (I don't think I used the full amount), but it was excellent and made enough leftovers for multiple lunches. I could have used multiple recipes that week for the root vegetables challenge since we left BJ's with a 5-lb bag of Idaho potatoes and a 3-lb bag of sweet potatoes, but it was nice to make this again.

Week 51 - Hungarian

How is it already the last week of the year?! I better step up the pace on these challenge recaps, because there are still some unfinished/unwritten 2022 challenge posts, and I don't want to add another year to that list!

Another opportunity for some progress on two challenges at once! I hadn't made anything for Hungary for the AtWCC yet since we are still in the As (and will be for the foreseeable future), but our experience with Hungarian food in general is slim. We had chimney cakes at the holiday market one year (something that I have no idea how we would replicate for the AtWCC), I had goulash at a tiny cafe in Connecticut over two decades ago, and we had something called a Hungarian pancake years ago in Chicago, but at a Polish restaurant, so possibly not even really a Hungarian dish. This challenge was an opportunity to try out a dish I've been eyeing for a long, long time - chicken paprikash (paprikás csirke).

Chicken paprikash features chicken (obviously) in a creamy sauce with lots of paprika (also obvious from the name). In the recipe I followed from Daring Gourmet, you start by browning the chicken, and then putting together a vegetable base consisting of onions, garlic, tomatoes, and Hungarian bell pepper. We don't live in a heavily Eastern European area, so there were no Hungarian bell peppers here. But in the comments, I saw that they are relatively mild and similar to banana peppers or cubanelle peppers (aka Italian peppers), the latter of which we definitely have here, so I went with that. Seasonings were a lot of paprika (used regular paprika because our spice shelf is already overflowing with no room for new ones like the imported Hungarian paprika they suggested), and also salt and pepper.

The chicken gets added back in, then covered in chicken broth to cook for a while. Once the chicken has cooked through, the sauce is made by adding in a mixture of flour, sour cream, and heavy whipping cream (used the new vegan version from Trader Joe's for the whipping cream, which seemed fine, but I really have no basis for comparison). The sauce took far longer to come together and thicken than I thought it would, so dinner ended up being far later than planned. We ate everything over some pasta (can't do egg noodles here, so just used some mafalda corta, which was a good match), with roasted asparagus and onions on the side. The total cost was approximately $16.91 for the chicken alone, about $23-24 with the pasta and vegetables. Definitely not the most expensive challenge meal we've done, and I don't know how much of that is the ingredients themselves versus the inflated grocery prices right now. Guess I will have to price the dishes out more consistently like I used to if I'm going to figure that out.

The problem with trying out a new dish you've never had before is that you're never quite sure if you got the flavor right. It tasted really good, and the sauce was very creamy with lots of paprika, but was it right? No idea. It was very rich and heavy from the sour cream and heavy whipping cream, not our most-preferred flavor profile, so we probably won't make this that often (besides the fact that it took a long time to prep and make), but it was delicious. Looking forward to the day when we can try it at a Hungarian restaurant and see how we did!