Start of the Year (2024)

First set of challenge blurbs for the 2024 challenge! Hoping to catch up on the other posts from this year before I get even more off track on the timing (again) ...

Week 4 - peeling

Peeling should have been an easy challenge to figure out, but I didn't want to just do something like potatoes because that was something I would use a peeler on. I eventually chose a shaved asparagus salad from Two Peas and Their Pod to be the starting point for our salad. I haven't had much raw asparagus, so this would be something new. Unfortunately, my plans to make a gigantic salad went out the window when my asparagus shavings didn't look nearly as good or robust as the recipe photos, and when the peeler would stop shaving anything but scraps once I got halfway through each piece of asparagus.  I have no idea what I was doing differently or wrong, but it became a bit tedious trying to get good pieces of asparagus, and I was still left with the question of what do with all the parts I couldn't peel. I ended up just doing a small side salad and roasting the rest instead.

I modified the recipe quite a bit for what we had and to simplify it. The salad itself consisted of asparagus, some baby greens (too expensive and rotted too quickly, probably could have skipped), crumbled feta cheese (my sub for shaved parmesan because that was pricey, and the grocery bill was already high due to the $6.99/lb asparagus plus the overpriced salad greens), chopped walnuts (recipe was pistachios, but we already had some open walnuts), and a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, and some agave. The recipe also included avocados, but the ones at the store didn't look great either. The salad plus the roasted asparagus together cost about $11, which was more than the turkey cheeseburgers I served them with. All together, the meal was probably close to $19. I probably wouldn't make this specific salad again unless I figured out where I went wrong with the peeling, but the small batch I did make did taste good.

Week 5 - celestial

This was the first challenge this year that really puzzled me. All that came to mind was Celestial Seasonings tea, which I didn't really want to do for the challenge, and after reading more about it (here), really, really didn't want to do for the challenge. Ideas that came up in discussion included sun (like sun chips), moon (like mooncakes), planetary designs, and for a long time, the thing that made the most sense to do was something Star Wars-related (and there are some great recipes on their site). In the end, I wasn't feeling super artistic and I wanted to do something that would also work for dinner, not dessert, so I decided to go with zodiac signs, more specifically Pisces, and make fish. 

I found a recipe on Food & Wine for a baked flounder with Parmesan crumbs, and that sounded perfect for this challenge and a nice dinner. The fish was lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, and then topped with a mixture of melted butter, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and panko breadcrumbs. The dish was delicious and so simple to make, and it paired well with some roasted asparagus and smashed potatoes. Not the best for a low-calorie diet or the most affordable (the fish part itself was probably around $11, but not 100% sure because I can't remember the flounder price per piece, which meant a $24 meal when paired with the $8 asparagus and $5 potatoes, but we were absolutely stuffed and had leftover potatoes), but would definitely make all of it again.

Week 7 - discontinued

I was obsessed with the Wild Mountain chicken sandwich at Wendy's back in the early 2000s and so sad when they discontinued it. It was a crispy chicken sandwich with bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion, colby jack cheese (didn't realize we ran out of it before making this so had to substitute), and a southwestern sauce. I used the sauce from a copycat recipe of the Wild Mountain bacon cheeseburger, consisting of (vegan) mayo, paprika, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, cayenne, oregano, salt, and sugar, and I think it turned out pretty close to what I remember (but it has been about 20 years). Approximate cost was $8.95 for three sandwiches, so far cheaper than Wendy's would ever be. It was "only" a chicken sandwich, but I would absolutely make this again for the memories.

Week 10 - balling

My first thought for balling was meatballs, but then it became a challenge to figure out what type of meatball, since just about every culture has some version of meatballs. In the end, we were coming off a week of the flu and more illnesses, everyone was feeling fatigued, and we had to cancel a bunch of grocery trips, so the easiest thing to do was spaghetti and meatballs, something I personally really like anyway. These meatballs were a combination of Impossible burger, onion, garlic powder, breadcrumbs, flax egg, grated parmesan cheese (the green bottle kind), salt, pepper, thyme, and oregano, generally based on the recipe on the Impossible website. 

Rather than make my own sauce (school night, fatigue, etc), I just went with a caramelized onion and garlic jarred sauce and some whole wheat spaghetti. The total for dinner, including the roasted asparagus we ate on the side, was about $15.92, with some extra pasta and sauce left over. I doubt it would have cost this much five years ago (been cleaning out some old receipts), but 2024 prices are ridiculous, even for something basic like spaghetti and meatballs. But it is still cheaper than getting it at a restaurant though for the amount it made. Also, not sure if it was because our cheese was older or what, but our stomachs didn't respond too well to this, even though it did taste good. It did apparently reawaken some interest for spaghetti and meatballs from the little one, which was a nice surprise.

First 10 done (with some more individual posts to come)!

Week 2 (2023) - Cabbage

Coming off a challenge year where I made a lot of salads including shredded cabbage, I did not want to do that for the week 2 cabbage challenge. I searched cabbage recipes for a bit until I found one on The Kitchn for a caramelized cabbage butter pasta. That sounded delicious and cozy for a winter night.

I am not a huge fan of buying whole cabbages. I think my hourlong cleaning adventure with a Savoy cabbage back when I first started cooking for real is probably the cause of that, even though working with the green cabbage from our cabbage rolls a couple of years ago wasn't as bad. Since the recipe offered an alternative of buying pre-shredded cabbage to save time, and since the cabbage was going to end up shredded anyway, that sounded like the best option for convenience. I ended up getting a cole slaw mix with carrots in it too, but more vegetables are always welcome.

It did take a little bit of time to soften and caramelize the cabbage, and I didn't start with quite enough butter in the beginning, but once it was finished, it tasted really good. We don't usually make plain buttered pasta, but I definitely see how it is a comfort food for so many people. This was really good, especially the parts where the cabbage combined with the melted parmesan cheese. I don't know if we would make it again any time soon, since B hasn't been interested in cabbage yet, but it's good to know this recipe is here if we ever need/want it.

Kicking Off the AtWCC

The first country we explored for the Around the World Cooking Challenge was Afghanistan, and we started way back in June 2020. I really meant to recap these on time, and I actually wrote many of the posts back in 2020, so why did it take almost two years to get to this point? Because I had wanted to write WorldEats restaurant summaries of our Afghan food exploration first to show what we were modeling the dishes after, but that just never happened because it was a daunting task that I never seemed to have enough time to do. Since we're almost to our fifth stop on our world tour, it's time to get started, with or without the WorldEats recaps.

Aushak

My favorite Afghan dish is probably aushak, leek dumplings topped with a meat sauce and yogurt sauce. I mentioned this in my 2011 favorite food memories list, and we got it often when we went to Ariana, one of our favorite neighborhood places when we lived in Hell's Kitchen. (I've said favorite a lot in this paragraph, but aushak deserves it.) Aushak is a fair amount of work though, and I wasn't so good at making dumplings (still not great at it), so it was not how I wanted to start the challenge. But there was another dish at Ariana called aushe burida that we got a couple of times, which was sliced noodles with a very similar garlic and mint yogurt sauce and meat curry sauce that was kind of like aushak but with noodles instead of dumplings. I decided to start there to try to start off the challenge with a win.

Aushe burida, looks very similar to aushak

I couldn't find a recipe for aushe burida online, and every time I searched for it, I just got brought back to the description of the dish at Ariana, so I'm not sure if that's just one of their family recipes or if it's spelled differently elsewhere or what. So I pulled up an aushak recipe from Tara's Multicultural Table, used that to get some ideas about the sauce, and tried to adapt that from what we remembered about aushe burida at Ariana (which wasn't that easy since it had been years since the last time we had it), adding in some leeks as a nod to the flavor of the aushak.

There were three main components to the dish: the noodles, the meat sauce, and the yogurt sauce. I ended up with a yogurt sauce that consisted of plain yogurt, salt, a lot of garlic powder, a few cloves of minced garlic, and about 1/3 cup of finely chopped fresh mint. The yogurt sauce chilled in the fridge while I made the rest of the recipe. Although the aushe burida at Ariana was made with homemade noodles, I chose to just use dry pasta, because I definitely did not have time to tackle a separate pasta-making project too.

I made the meat sauce while the pasta was cooking using onion, garlic, a meatless crumble, salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic powder (a lot), paprika, ground coriander, scallions, leeks, tomato sauce, and chopped fresh mint, all generally added in that order with the mint at the end right before taking off the heat. Traditionally, this sauce would be made with actual meat, but I don't cook much red meat at home and opted this time to use the Gardein beefless ground. It would probably work with any ground meat or meat substitute though. The bowls when assembled were layered with the noodles on the bottom, then the meat sauce, and lastly topped with the yogurt.

Overall, we liked the dish, and we thought the taste got close to what we remembered of the aushak and aushe burida at Ariana, but not exactly. We thought maybe it was the richness of the meat stewing in the sauce that was missing with the plant-based meat substitutes, so maybe something like Impossible Burger would be better since it mimics the flavor of beef so much more. Visually, the sauce also looked different from what we had at the restaurant because it looked like there were some yellow split peas in their sauce. Maybe there were also more secret ingredients that we couldn't guess.

We've made this several more times since then, mostly using the same recipe with some minor tweaks until about 22 months later when I tried a recipe from a cookbook I hadn't yet discovered the first time around (not surprising considering I wasn't really browsing library catalogs or cookbook lists less than 3 months into the pandemic). More on that another time!

Week 2 - Noodles

The Week 2 challenge, noodles, was one of those themes where it's so easy to find something to fit that it makes choosing something really difficult. I ended up picking ketchup spaghetti / spaghetti Napolitan from Just One Cookbook, something we've never had before. I had no idea that ketchup-flavored pasta was a thing in Japan, but it seems that ketchup became popular for the sauce because tomato sauce was rare in the post-war era. According to the recipe notes, it's still a fairly popular yoshoku (Western-influenced food) dish there, so it sounded like a good one to try!

I didn't make many changes to the recipe here so that it would be as authentic as possible, and combined some tricolor spaghetti with garlic chicken sausage, green peppers, mushrooms, and onions. The sauce was predominantly ketchup with some Worcestershire sauce, pasta water, salt, and pepper.

This was a very simple dish to make, perfect for a school night. While a ketchup sauce can't match the richness of a well-developed tomato sauce, I don't really think it's fair to compare, as they felt like two very different dishes. We really liked this, and it's nice to know now that ketchup is another option for pasta sauce!

Week 37 - Shells

Clearly I didn't finish the posts for the 52 week cooking challenge for 2020 before the end of the year. I really tried, but December just got so unexpectedly busy. I did finish all the challenges though, even if I did do two of them on the last day of the year. Finishing these posts is priority #1, because otherwise it will get really confusing once I start posting for the 2021 challenge. Priority #2 will be finally telling the AtWCC story, because that is long overdue and at least half the posts were already written ages ago!

The Week 37 challenge theme was shells. This one was a little challenging for me, because I didn't really want to make shellfish with shells on, taco shells seemed too hard and crispy for a small toddler, and pasta shells just didn't feel that challenge-worthy. But in the end, I decided to go with some medium-sized pasta shells. because I do love the shape, pasta is an easy dinner to put together, and it still meant I was making a recipe new to us.

I made chicken fajita pasta using the recipe from Closet Cooking, and it turned out delicious. The ingredients were:

- 1 package of pasta shells

- olive oil

- 1/2 packet of taco seasoning

- 1 onion

- 3 bell peppers

- large spoonful of garlic

- 1.5 cups of chicken broth

- 1 can diced tomatoes

- 1/2 cup sour cream

- 1/3 bunch of cilantro, chopped

- shredded Mexican cheese

My arms were tired the day I made this, and I was kind of tired of stirring, so we ended up just putting the sour cream on top of our bowls and mixing it in ourselves. It did taste better with the sour cream than without, but it worked.

If I made this again, I would probably mix the entire thing together as intended, but for the challenge, it was good enough.

Week 23 - Picnic Food

We don't really do a lot of picnics, but when I think about picnics, one thing that comes to mind is pasta salad. I've made pasta salads before, so I thought for the challenge, I'd try a new recipe, which led me to one from Spend with Pennies.

I made our pasta salad with grape tomatoes, bell peppers, red onions, pepperoni, olives, and mozzarella cheese, and chickpea rotini. It was a great combination that worked well for the warm weather, and the recipe made a lot of salad, so we had plenty of leftovers!

Week 20 - Julienning

How is it already mid-May?! The last time I finished a post here, it was the end of March, still cold outside, we hadn't been vaccinated yet, and most people were still taking the pandemic seriously (or at least pretending to). I'm so behind on the 52 week cooking challenge posts and the Around the World Cooking Challenge posts and the WorldEats posts that I think I might need to start doing shortened versions for some of them, so that I can still track/share our journey but not have it be such an overwhelming task. The Week 20 challenge seems perfect for a quick entry.

Challenge week: 20

Theme: Julienning

AtWCC country: Philippines (counting for both challenges, see below)

What we made: Pancit, based on a Filipino cooking class we took

How much it cost (with breakdown): $21.67 (dinner for 3 + two lunches for 2)

- 1 lb noodles - $3.99

- 1 package of Short Cuts roasted chicken - $5

- about 1/2 lb of shrimp - $3.87

- 1-2 lbs of carrots - $1

- 1 bunch of celery - $1.59 (probably only 1/2 bunch but the other 1/2 froze and had to be thrown out)

- about 1 lb of snap peas - $3.50

- 1 yellow onion - $0.37

- minced garlic - $0.05

- a couple big scoops of chicken broth - $1

- a few tbsp soy sauce - $0.45

- a few tbsp oyster sauce - $0.85

Challenge quick review: I could have done an entire dish of julienned vegetables, but we were already scheduled for a pancit cooking class, and the carrots needed to be julienned, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to knock out this challenge without spending hours in the kitchen trying to precisely chop vegetables. I am not the best with making exact sizes and shapes when chopping things, since they're all going to end up in the same place anyway and close has always seemed good enough here.

As for the pancit itself, I did a lot of the prep and A did most of the actual cooking, and it was so good. It tasted like pancit you might get at a restaurant. Since the recipe isn't really public or ours since it was from a cooking class, we don't feel right going into any further detail on the "how" in another post, so I'm going to count this for the AtWCC here too. We did explore something new (for our kitchen), which is the whole point of that challenge. We have a lot more noodles, so I see a lot more pancit in our future!

Week 43 - Food Mashups

The Week 43 theme was food mashups. I think when I first saw it, it was late at night, and I couldn't even comprehend what that meant. After reading some of the comments on Reddit, it made so much more sense. Cheeseburger pie, cheeseburger pizza, sushi burritos, baked potato pizza, the possibilities were pretty much endless. Honestly, it's also very similar to how we eat these days anyway, pairing all sorts of dishes with tots or pasta since they're easier for B to eat than some of the other smaller grains. I wanted to do something a little more composed though, so after reading over a few different recipes for taco pasta, I came up with a plan.

The ingredients for our food mashup were:

- 1 box of chickpea rotini ($2.12)

- 1 tbsp olive oil ($0.10)

- 1 yellow onion ($0.45)

- 1 red bell pepper ($1.50)

- 1 green bell pepper ($0.90)

- 1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic ($0.10)

- 1 package of TJ's beefless beef ($2.99)

- 3 scallions ($0.40)

- about 1/2 bottle of Pace mild salsa ($1.34)

- a few large spoonfuls of sour cream ($0.59)

- a few handfuls of shredded cheddar cheese ($1.20)

- taco seasoning: chili powder, coriander, paprika, salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic powder, cumin, oregano (didn't measure, just eyeballed it and adjusted to taste) ($0.50)

It's a little hard to estimate the cost of this one since most of it was not measured, but the approximate amount was $12.19. It was enough for dinner for the three of us, plus a little extra for brunch the next day.

The steps for making the pasta were:

1. Prep - cook pasta, chop onion, chop red pepper, chop green pepper, chop scallions, make taco seasoning.

2. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions and cook until translucent, then add peppers. Once peppers have softened a bit, add garlic, cook for a minute or so, and then add beefless beef. Add the taco seasoning, and make sure everything is mixed together well. Add water, a tbsp or so at a time, as needed if everything starts to stick at any point during the cooking process.

3. Add half the salsa and mix into the beef mixture. Taste and add seasonings if needed (didn't add anything here).

4. Add pasta into the skillet with the beef mixture, and mix together well. Add sour cream and the other half of the salsa, and make sure everything is coated well. Sprinkle in some cheddar cheese and stir in well. [I originally had only added a small amount of salsa, but after tasting it with the sour cream, it needed more. I like how it turned out, adding more salsa in this step, so I've written it as we made it.]

5. Serve in bowls, topped with additional cheese if desired!

You might notice that I haven't actually referred to the name of the dish in this post, only mentioning that I looked at recipes for taco pasta or that I made pasta. The main reason for that is that the name evolved as I was making it. I intended first for it to be taco pasta, more Mexican-style with onions and cilantro, but then I didn't want to buy a package of cilantro just for this (and also wasn't in the mood to clean and chop it). So I switched it to an American-style taco with chopped tomato and cheddar cheese, but then our tomato was just on the edge of going bad, so that was out. I thought maybe it should be burrito pasta, but there were no beans in it, so then I realized what corresponded best to what I made - quesadilla pasta! There was a beefless beef filling and cheese, plus salsa and sour cream, which you would normally find on the side of a quesadilla. Perfect name for our mashup.

As for the taste, we really liked it. I didn't think using the Pace salsa instead of just seasonings would make that much of a difference, but it did. Very happy with our choice to buy that, and that it added so much flavor while being mild enough for B to eat. Would make this again!

Week 18 - Ginger

I'm a little picky when it comes to ginger. I love the flavor ginger adds to dishes, especially in Chinese cuisine, but I am not a fan of big chunks or slices of ginger showing up on the plate. That super-strong concentrated ginger flavor just overpowers everything, and it can be very sharp. I don't even really like the pickled ginger you get on the side of sushi (although I do find that more tolerable on yakisoba). Ginger candies for nausea are sometimes too much. I usually give most of the ginger of that type that I get to A, who loves it. On the other hand, I'm completely fine with ginger if it's finely chopped, ground into a paste, or in any form where it isn't so strong that it overpowers everything it's served with. I guess in time we'll see where B falls on the ginger-loving spectrum.

The Week 18 challenge, ginger, therefore was going to require me to choose a recipe very carefully. I needed to find something where ginger was a star ingredient and a predominant flavor, but one that wouldn't make me wince from how strong it was. It didn't take me long to find a recipe for ginger scallion ramen noodles on Bon Appetit, a recipe I think I bookmarked some time ago but never made.  (This was back before I learned about Bon Appetit's treatment of its BIPOC contributors; I don't look for recipes there anymore.) I do like the ginger scallion sauce often served with chicken at Chinese restaurants, so I felt confident that this recipe would work to both showcase ginger and be something I could tolerate (and hopefully be not too strong for B either).

Ingredients:

Being able to make this recipe hinged on one important question (since this was back in April when grocery stock was far less reliable and consistent). Would our Whole Foods delivery include ginger, or would we have to postpone the challenge until we could get some? Most of the other ingredients we already had, other than toasted sesame oil (but we had regular), but considering ginger was the star of the recipe, there was no way around it. Luckily, ginger was not one of the out-of-stock items from our delivery (just no scallions, but thankfully we already had some, or yeast), so we were able to proceed. Our modified ingredients list was:


- 4-5 inches of ginger, peeled and finely chopped ($0.42)
- 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped ($0.20)
- 1 small bunch of scallions, thinly sliced ($1.29)
- just under 1/2 cup grapeseed oil ($1.20)
- 2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce ($0.40)
- 1 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar ($0.20)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)
- 1 tsp toasted sesame oil ($0.59)
- small squeeze of agave ($0.15)
- 4 packages of ramen (each about 3.5 oz) ($3.50)

A few ingredient notes:
- We used just under 1/2 cup of grapeseed oil (the recipe called for 1/2 cup) because we used less scallions and less ramen (by ounce) than the original recipe, but we probably could have used the whole thing (or even slightly larger quantities of that and the other liquid ingredients) to make more sauce. Interestingly, the comments to the recipe say that most found it too greasy and too oily, but it didn't seem that way for us. Maybe it was the noodles we used that soaked everything up better?
- We only had a small bunch of scallions left, some of which were already wilted because they were old, but would use a bigger batch next time. Would also use more garlic.
- We used the A-Sha Tainan-style noodles because it was what we already had at home, but the slightly thicker, more wavy ramen noodles might be a better fit because they might hold the sauce a little better. We bought them so long ago that we don't actually remember what they cost, so I just guessed.
- The approximate cost of the noodles was $7.97, and we ate it with some vegetable spring rolls, so dinner probably cost $10.37 total. Not bad for a tasty, filling dinner for three (no leftovers and still ate dessert later).

Steps:

We followed the recipe fairly closely, and the steps were:


1. Prep - finely chop garlic and ginger, thinly slice scallions. [I probably chopped more finely than necessary, but I wanted to make sure the raw ingredients weren't too crunchy for B.]

2. Put the chopped garlic, ginger, and 2/3 of the scallions (including all the whites) in a large bowl.

3. Heat grapeseed oil over high heat until shimmering (hot but not smoking yet, doesn't take very long), and then pour hot oil over the mixture in the bowl. Stir to make sure everything is coated by the oil.

4. Wait 5 minutes and then add the rest of the scallions. Stir well.


5. Add soy sauce, vinegar, black pepper, sesame oil, and agave. Let mixture sit for about 15 minutes, and adjust for taste (didn't need any adjustment).

6. Make ramen noodles.

7. Drain ramen noodles, mix in ginger-scallion sauce (reserving a small amount in the bowl), and mix well so all the noodles are coated by the sauce.

8. Serve ramen in bowls, and top with some of the sauce and infused oil.

Conclusion:


This turned out really well! When I tasted the sauce on its own, the ginger flavor was strong, but not unbearable. Mixed in with the ramen, the ginger flavor was more subdued, far less sharp, but still very present. The overall flavor of the sauce was great, and we all liked it, including B. Just kind of wished there were more of it to mix in with the ramen. We would definitely make this again!

Week 17 - From Scratch II

For the Week 17 "from scratch" challenge, I originally intended to bake bread, which I couldn't do because we had no yeast. After I wrote up a whole explanation about that (here), Week 21 was announced as flour. Making bread twice didn't seem like it would really be in the spirit of the challenge, plus we still had no yeast, so I decided to make bread at some later date for the flour challenge instead and do something else for "from scratch."

I follow a lot of chefs on Instagram, and one of the posts I bookmarked was a recipe for a vegetarian bolognese from Chef Eric Ripert. We love bolognese, but this point in the pandemic wasn't really a great time to buy meat for a whole bunch of reasons, so a vegetarian version sounded perfect for a Meatless Monday dinner. Most of the pasta we've been making lately is using sauce from a jar, since pasta has become one of our go-to recipes when we need something quick and convenient, so making this would definitely qualify as making something from scratch that we normally get store-bought. I didn't really think this through until I had already started making the dish, so unfortunately I don't really have a lot of pictures other than the finished product. Also, our counters are cluttered with groceries in various stages of quarantine, so sadly we don't really have much space for ingredient photos anyway.

To make the sauce, you need:

- olive oil ($0.35)
- 1 onion ($0.79)
- about 5 cloves of garlic ($0.20)
- mushrooms ($2.29)
- bell pepper ($1.50)
- tomato ($0.29)
- can of crushed tomatoes ($1.59)
- seasonings: salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary (his original had herbs de Provence but we got rid of ours recently in our pre-pandemic spice cabinet clean-out) ($0.50)
- pasta ($1.99)
- parmesan cheese ($1)

At an estimated cost of $7.50 for the sauce, it's more than a store-bought sauce would cost us, but we usually do add vegetables and sometimes meatballs to those sauces, so it's not significantly more. The entire thing cost us about $10.50 for dinner for three (with a small bowl of leftovers for lunch), so not bad at all.


It was a pretty simple sauce to make, but just took some time to come together. The first layer of the sauce was the onion, garlic, and seasonings, followed by the mushrooms (until the water evaporated), then the pepper, tomato, and crushed tomatoes, with seasoning adjusted throughout. Once all the ingredients were in and the sauce was simmering, it was time for the pasta which got drizzled with olive oil once drained. The whole thing was topped with parmesan (grated or shredded) at the end. Not as quick and easy as sauce from a jar, but a lot more vegetables!

How did we like the sauce? As a mushroom pasta sauce, pretty good. It was a little light on the seasoning, since I didn't add a ton of salt because it's not great for toddlers, but it tasted healthy and like the vegetables it contained. As a bolognese, it didn't really work for us. For bolognese, we really love that richness and those nuances of flavor that just didn't come through when meat was substituted with mushrooms (at least not the ones we got from Trader Joe's). I think in the future if I wanted to turn a meat sauce vegetarian, I might stick with the meat substitutes, like the beef-less crumbles or an Impossible Burger, because there is just that expectation of certain flavorings with a meat sauce that can't be replicated by only using vegetables. Good recipe for a mushroom pasta sauce though!

Week 3 - Russian

Week 3 of the 52 week cooking challenge brought something new into our kitchen - Russian cuisine! While we've had Russian food before at places like Teremok (sadly now closed) and Onegin (which I think is also closed) here in the city, we've never made it at home, so this was something completely new. After reading through lots of recipes for Russian dishes, the one that seemed to make the most sense for a challenge family dinner was a recipe for turkey stroganoff that I found on Simply Recipes. Although we had definitely heard of stroganoff before (mostly beef stroganoff), A and I weren't actually sure we'd ever eaten it before, so that made this one a little hard to judge in terms of whether my finished product came close to what a stroganoff should be.

According to Wikipedia, stroganoff as it has evolved today in many parts of the world consists of meat (usually beef), mushrooms, onions, and a sour cream sauce over pasta or rice. This recipe certainly seemed to classify as a stroganoff based on that description. In our adapted version, we used the following ingredients:

- 1 package of white mushrooms, sliced ($3.99)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.35)
- 2 tbsp butter ($0.20)
- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.35)
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg ($0.10)
- 1 tbsp dried thyme ($0.20)
- 1/2 cup sour cream ($0.50)
- freshly ground black pepper ($0.05)
- 1 package of pasta (brown rice fusilli) ($1.99)

While stroganoff is often accompanied by egg noodles, we obviously couldn't do that here for allergy reasons, so we just went with some brown rice fusilli since it would also be able to hold the sauce decently well. The original recipe was also targeted at Thanksgiving leftovers, using turkey and gravy, but since it was January, we opted for ground turkey. The estimated cost for the entire recipe was $11.73. It would have been under $10 if we got the mushrooms from Trader Joe's instead of our local Superfresh since the package there is slightly smaller and cheaper, but for dinner for three plus a little left over for lunch, that's really not a bad price.

After two very long cooking challenges that took more time than we anticipated, I am happy to say that this recipe took less than an hour from start to finish. (Finally!) The steps for making the stroganoff were:

1. Dry saute the mushrooms until they release water (about 5 min).

2. Add the butter and onions, and cook until onions are done.

3. Make pasta at some point while everything else is cooking.

4. Add ground turkey, nutmeg, black pepper, and thyme, and cook turkey, breaking it up as it cooks, until done.

5. Remove from heat and add sour cream. Mix well.

Pretty simple to execute, and probably could have been done faster if the turkey had completely finished thawing before we started cooking. It was nice to finally make something for a challenge meal that didn't take two hours.

So, how was the stroganoff? I liked it, but not as much as some other pasta dishes we've made before. It seemed relatively basic in flavor, and you couldn't really taste the thyme or the nutmeg, just the sour cream, turkey, and black pepper. A found it a little bit bland. B didn't seem to be a huge fan of it for dinner either, but he had had cheese and Cheerios for a snack not that much earlier, so that may have also played a role. He was willing to eat it for lunch another day, but nowhere near as enthusiastically as the fajita pasta bake we made another night (which was a bigger hit with the whole family). Also, we have no idea whether or not it was really representative of what stroganoff should be, since we don't think we have anything to compare it to, or how "Russian" it really tasted, given that that was the challenge. Conclusion - good dinner, glad we tried it, but don't think it'll make it into our regular rotation.

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

Reviews of Trader Joe's products aren't usually that long or time-consuming, yet somehow it's November and we haven't posted in ages despite trying a ton of new stuff (even if not new to TJ's, new to us). I've really been trying to write more, hoping to exercise that part of my brain regularly, so hopefully I can get more of these up soon. They're very helpful to us, even if no one else out there is actually reading them, because it's so hard to remember with so many products which ones we've tried and liked and which ones aren't our thing. Without further ado, the next up is the gnocchi alla Sorrentina ($2.99)!

These gnocchi are in the frozen section and are pretty easy to make. They have both microwave and stovetop instructions, but we made them on the stove in a skillet. Just add some water to the skillet, add the contents of the bag (gnocchi and large circles of pasta sauce and cheese), and cook until everything is melted and warm. There aren't any surprise or hidden ingredients here; it's just gnocchi (wheat and potatoes), tomatoes and tomato juice, mozzarella cheese, and seasonings, like onion, basil, garlic, and some white and chili pepper. But since that's all there was to it, we were looking to make it a more complete meal and added some Mediterranean vegetables (really just squash, green beans, and carrots, but that's what 365 has deemed "Mediterranean"). They were a good match for it, and overall, it was a good meal, but it wasn't anything extraordinary.

Buy again? Maybe, if we're in the mood for gnocchi and too lazy to make our own dish with the shelf-stable ones and some sauce. This is a quick and easy way to prepare it, and convenience would be the main reason we'd get it again.

Gnocchi with Sausage and Spinach

It's been ages since we've made a new recipe from scratch, between the dietary restrictions of pregnancy and my difficulty in moving around the kitchen, and then adjusting to hectic life with a newborn and schedules and exhaustion levels that aren't always conducive to cooking. I'm not saying that we didn't cook at home at all, but I'm not counting easy dishes with interchangeable ingredients like scrambles, pasta, sandwiches, stir-frying vegetables, or throwing things into a simmer sauce, or the Korean braised tofu that we always make. The only other things we've made since the beginning of this calendar year are the scallion pancakes that A made from his mom's recipe. I have to go all the way back to Thanksgiving when I made stuffing to find something I've made from scratch that isn't one of the "usual" dishes, and I don't even know how far back I'd have to go to find an experiment with a new recipe.

My focus now is a little more on recipes that are quick, easy, and nutritious as opposed to more complicated cooking projects, but a dish doesn't need to be difficult or time-consuming to expand my cooking horizons. There were many weeks when I wasn't even meal planning or looking for new recipes, so it felt really good to be back to even thinking about trying new things recently.

I've been cleaning out piles of old magazines recently (way too much clutter at home), and found an easy-sounding recipe in an issue of Real Simple from March 2007. (No, that's not a typo. The magazine was over a decade old.) We were heading to the grocery store over the weekend (don't go nearly as much as we used to since we were typically night shoppers), and gnocchi with sausage and spinach seemed like an easy thing to shop for and make. We already had Italian pork sausage in the freezer, and since we're trying to do a better job of eating the food we have in a timely manner, that made this recipe even more appealing.

The ingredients for the dish were minimal and included:

- 1 17-oz package of shelf-stable gnocchi ($1.69)
- olive oil ($0.25)
- 1 yellow onion ($0.79)
- 1 package of Italian pork sausage, about 1.5 lb, casings removed ($4)
- 1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic ($0.15)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.05)
- 1 bag of baby spinach ($1.99)
- grated parmesan cheese, about 1/2 cup mixed in plus more to garnish ($0.50) *

* I don't know exactly how much the cheese cost since my parents picked it up for us when they got some groceries after B arrived, but that's about what it would cost with the usual price of parmesan.

Just under $10 for a filling dinner for two was so much better than ordering yet another dinner from Seamless.

The steps for making the dish were pretty simple:

1. Cook gnocchi according to package. In our case, that was boil water, drop in gnocchi, and cook for about 3 minutes. (So quick!) Once gnocchi is cooked, reserve 1/4 cup of cooking liquid and then drain.
2. Heat olive oil over medium heat, and cook onion until soft.
3. Add sausage and crumble while cooking until browned.
4. Add garlic, salt, pepper, and spinach. Cook until spinach is wilted.
5. Add drained gnocchi, reserved cooking liquid, and grated cheese. Toss well.
6. Serve with additional cheese on top.

I really liked this dish, not just because it was simple, and not just because it was the first new thing I'd made in a while. The Italian pork sausage gave the dish so much flavor, like it does in just about everything it's added to, and it was nice to have the spinach to balance out the heavier sausage and gnocchi. The gnocchi soaked up all of the sausage flavor, and the cheese pulled it all together (even though I often forgot to garnish the bowls with more cheese). I think it would probably be better with straight parmesan cheese, but we used a shredded parmigiano reggiano stravecchio because that's what my parents picked up that time, which has a slightly different flavor. Nice and quick, we would definitely make this again.

Striped Garganelli

It's almost the end of January, and neither of us has written up our top 10 food memories from last year (actually not sure either of us has nailed down a top 10 list either), but in order to get back into the practice of writing, we're diving back into our Trader Joe's reviews.

TJ's came out with this striped garganelli pasta, part of their organic Italian artisan pasta line, back in December, featuring pink and white striped tube-shaped pasta for the holidays. We'd had good luck with some other pasta in the artisan line, so we were hoping that these festive-looking shapes would continue the trend. Colored pasta is also just really fun to eat! Here, the pink color came from beet root powder, and the only other ingredients in the pasta were the organic durum wheat semolina (sourced from Puglia, Italy) and water, very simple with nothing unnecessary added.

The package said to boil the pasta for 14-15 minutes, which seemed kind of long for us, so we just tried to cook it until it seemed al dente. (Don't remember exactly how long that was.) Unfortunately, this one seemed to cook unevenly, reminding us of our experience with the winter snowflake pasta, except in this case, the issue was with each individual piece. The folded-over part of the pasta and the rest of the tube shape didn't match in texture the way we were hoping they would, with the folded-over part a little too chewy when the rest was al dente, or the folded-over part being just right with the rest of the piece being too soft, but apparently that was the intention. Reading the TJ's blog after we made it (probably should have checked before), they talked about how the folded-over center would be al dente while the ends would be soft like that was a feature of this pasta shape. Maybe we would have felt differently about the texture if we had had those expectations, but hard to determine in retrospect. It was definitely edible, but not the uniform al dente texture that we were hoping for.

We mixed the pasta with some garlic marinara sauce, meatballs, and mushrooms, and when spooning it into the bowl, you couldn't see the stripes at all. Removing the sauce, they were still there but much lighter and less pink, so if color is important, a non-tomato-based sauce would probably be a better fit. The pink stripes were a nice novelty for the holidays, but just that. The pasta served its purpose as a good vehicle for the sauce, but in the end, it didn't live up to some of the other pasta shapes we've tried before from TJ's.

Buy again? Probably not, since texture is important to us, and we've had better luck with other pasta shapes before.

Winter Snowflake Pasta

I love pasta shapes, so when Trader Joe's comes out with a new shaped pasta, it usually ends up in the cart. This winter snowflake pasta appeared near the end of last year and looked like a fun shape that would hold sauce well in all of the little snowflake holes.

The pasta did indeed hold the sauce, but we found that the thickness of the pieces wasn't that uniform. That meant that if you tested one piece and it was al dente, it didn't mean all the rest were equally cooked through. I think if we had realized in advance how different some of them were, we would have probably cooked them on the longer side. They were good, but not as good as some other shapes we've had before.

Buy again? If this were to turn up again, probably not. We didn't like it as much as some others, and I prefer vegetable or whole wheat pasta for health reasons, so probably not.

Week 27 - Garlic

We love garlic, and so much of what we cook already includes garlic, so the big question for the garlic challenge was to figure out what we could make that really shone a spotlight on garlic. Sometime after the challenge theme was announced, BBC Good Food published a recipe for cheesy garlic bread wedges, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. I bookmarked it for the garlic challenge, and then got around to making it a few weeks after the challenge. (Very behind this year...)

We generally followed the recipe, since the photos that accompanied it were drool-worthy and we wanted similar results, but did make some adaptations as usual. The ingredients we used were:

- 2 ciabatta sandwich rolls ($2.50)

- 5 tbsp of butter, room temperature ($0.31)

- 10 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ($0.40)

- freshly ground black pepper, dried oregano, dried parsley, red pepper flakes ($0.20)

- about 1/4 lb of Jarlsberg lite cheese, shredded ($2.21)

The cost of the garlic bread was about $5.62. We probably could have gotten less expensive bread, but we made this several days after our grocery store visit and went to the local bakery instead for some fresh ciabatta.

The process for making the garlic bread was simple, but time-consuming, especially if you don't take the butter out to warm up to room temperature until you start prepping everything else. Basically, you chop up the garlic, mix it with the seasonings, and then beat that with the room temperature butter. Shred the cheese and then combine that with the butter mixture. Spread the thick butter-cheese-garlic mixture over each half of the ciabatta all the way to the edges. Last steps are to bake it at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes in loose foil pouches, and then open the pouches to bake for another 10-15 minutes.

Our garlic bread didn't come out quite as cheesy as the one in the BBCGF picture, as they probably used much more cheese than we did. We were happy with the results here though as the garlic flavor really came through, and it was so buttery and garlicky and delicious. In addition to the bread, the little bits of buttery cheese that fell off the ends of the bread and cooked on the foil were tasty cheese crunchies by the time the bread was done which was a nice bonus. This was actually the first time we had ever made garlic bread at home, and it was a pretty successful experiment.

Since garlic bread alone wasn't going to be a full meal, and we also needed some vegetables to offset the bread, we decided to make some pasta with a sauce full of zucchini, mushrooms, onions, and of course, lots of garlic. It was originally going to be turkey meatballs and mushrooms, but then one of my parents' friends gifted them a giant homegrown zucchini which was too big for them so they passed half of it down to us. It was seriously massive, so we decided to just swap that in for the meatballs for an unintentional Meatless Monday.

We had a ton of sauce left over after dinner, mostly thanks to the zucchini. It was a pretty good sauce and a nice garlicky accompaniment to the garlic bread, which was really the star of the night. Would definitely make that again.