As before, if any recipe in particular sounds good, let me know and I'll either post it or scan and email it to you (though I can't promise it will be prompt).
I count some recipes as "bonuses" or #A since my resolution was to cook dinners, but I wanted to keep track also of side dishes and desserts after the fact.
21. 5-12-13: Curried sweet potato couscous from 1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recipes. Very good. Couscous took longer to cook than expected, and I should have diced the sweet potatoes before cooking them (rather than cooking, then dicing, which left the dices kind of sloppy and mushy). Sweet potatoes, kale and couscous are the main ingredients, served over garbanzo beans.
22. 5-17-13: Orzo with roasted eggplant and cinnamon-cumin dressing from this recipe. No idea where I got the link to this recipe but oh, this recipe is good. It's definitely one that has been repeated multiple times and is always a favorite in our house. Eggplant, orzo, onion, raisins and cilantro with a great dressing. It's something I could eat again and again, and I think it's fairly healthy.
23. 5-17-13: Mexican bean salad from an unknown source, given to me by a friend. Basically beans, bell peppers, corn, red onion, and cilantro (plus I added jalapeno), with a dressing made of oil, vinegar, lemon and lime juice, etc. Super simple and very good.
23A. BONUS 5-17-13: Strawberry Brownie Tort from Simply Delicious Desserts. I actually made a big dinner on 5-17-13 for book club, full menu posted here. This obviously was the dessert. It was pretty good, but probably not something I'll repeat.
23B. 5-17-13: I also made Smoked gouda and apple stuffed mushrooms from an unknown source. My best friend gave me a copy of the recipe (it shares a page with a recipe for "roasted olives"). Very good -- mushrooms, butter, onion, garlic, gouda, breadcrumbs (I used panko), apple, salt and pepper. This was our book club appetizer. Probably something I'd make again. Stuffed mushrooms are one of my favorite appetizers in general.
24. 5-25-13: Roasted root vegetables over creamy polenta, from Pampered Chef's The Vegetarian Table. No idea why we ate this in May, but hubby picked the recipe. I tried to tell him those are winter vegetables, but he wasn't hearing it. So we had roasted carrots, onions, parsnips and turnip over creamy polenta. In late May in Dallas. Somehow the vegetables over-roasted and some were nearly burnt. Ugh. It said it serves 6, but I guess we're both eating double portions, because there are maybe 1-2 servings left. But it was still overall very good and a recipe I'd gladly make again. In the winter.
25. 5-27-13: Lentil salad from a friend (same one who gave me 2013 recipe number 23, listed above). Lentils, raisins, onions, feta and seasoning. So simple and amazingly good. We ate it at the Memorial Day picnic at my bestie's parents' place and we mostly ate it as a dip with some interesting chips that they had. Definitely something I'd be happy to make again.
26. 6-7-13: Broccoli mushroom quiche from this recipe. This is a repeat recipe that I tend to make most often when I'm doing a yoga challenge. I'm not doing a yoga streak right now, but it's the perfect dinner for me when I get home late and need to go to bed right away, but I also need to squeeze in dinner in between. We ended up with extra eggs at home (I put them on the grocery list by mistake) so I thought this would be a good way to use them up, while also making a couple quick dinners. The night I made it, we had it with monster green salads. The recipe made enough for one quiche in a pie-sized crust and there was enough leftover for one crustless quiche in a ramekin (that was for hubby). In reality, enough for three dinners and one lunch (the leftover dinner and lunch were for me).
27. 6-8-13: Blueberry risotto from this recipe. But I used red wine instead of white so that the risotto dish would be more purple than white. Good, probably something I will make again next year for blueberry festival, but not something that will repeat more than once a year. My husband was kind of irritated to find out that I'd used the remnants of a good bottle of Primitivo that was in the fridge to make this -- he couldn't drink because he was on pain meds, and I figured this would be better than letting it go bad, but I failed to consider it would have been better used by being served to our guests to drink. Oops. Pictured below 27A.
27A. 6-8-13: Blueberry compote from this recipe. Served over tofu for me and two dinner guests, and over chicken for hubby and one dinner guest. Liked it, recipe made way, way more than it indicated. If I make this for blueberry festival next year, I would cut the recipe in half. Pictured here:
27B. 6-8-13: Avocado mango salad from a recipe I found on my phone but can't seem to find on my computer. It's basically this recipe, but I thinly sliced the red onion instead of dicing it, and there were blueberries involved as well. Pretty good but not particularly remarkable. Pictured here:
27C. BONUS 6-8-13: Blueberry icebox pie from this recipe. Very easy to make. Pretty good except the crust needs way more butter than the recipe says (the recipe says 4 tsp but I assumed it meant 4 tbsp, but it should have been at least 6 tbsp). The crust was essentially a bunch of loose graham cracker crumbs. Pictured here:
Can you tell the dinner on 6-8-13 (recipes 27, 27A, 27B, and 27C) was for our "Uptown Blueberry Festival 2013"? So good and fun to try to use blueberries as an ingredient in every course.
28. BONUS 6-14-13: A chocolate cookie birthday cake (from Simply Delicious Desserts) for hubby's best friend's wife's 44th birthday. This was good but probably not something that I would make again. I'm not a huge chocolate cake person, but she is. Pictured here:
28. 6-16-13: Eggplant curry from Bon Appetit magazine's Nov. 2008 edition, which was passed my way by my mom. Another recipe that is a frequent repeat. It's not easy to make -- and I don't think it's very healthy. The eggplant slices have to be fried, and every single time I make this recipe, I end up setting off the smoke detector in the house, usually multiple times. I am not very good at frying foods.... But oh, the taste is worth it. And the leftovers were fabulous too. Pictured below 28A.
28A. BONUS 6-16-13: Brown rice black bean patties from an unknown source (appears to be a photocopy from a magazine or cookbook I pulled at some point). These were pretty good. I keep all my recipes that are photocopies or printouts in a binder, and I had this in the section for veggie burgers, but I don't think it would work well as a burger (which is probably why they're not called veggie burgers). I wouldn't mind making this again, but I also wouldn't be particularly enthusiastic about it. The leftovers weren't as good as the original patties. Pictured here:
29. 6-30-13: Mediterranean Curried Stew from 1,001 Low-Fat Vegetarian Recipes. Hubby's choice (he always tends to pick curried vegetable stew things, particularly with raisins). Very good. Eggplant, bell pepper (I omitted celery and doubled the bell pepper), garlic, diced tomatoes, zucchini, butternut squash, garbanzo beans. It was supposed to be served over turmeric rice (a separate recipe), but we went with a microwave bag of brown rice. It made enough for 2 meals for each of us, and it's something I'd make again. Pictured here:
30. 7-7-13: Warm Mediterranean lentil salad, from Easy Vegetarian. Pretty easy and very good. A lot of onion, but followed recipe and good. I picked around the tomatoes. Hubby's choice. This is actually the recipe on the cover of the cookbook if you click on that link, but mine didn't look that pretty. I think it was probably very healthy, but the leftovers were not as good as the original.
So with just over six months of the year done, I'm 60% of the way complete on this resolution -- so nice to be on track! If only all of them were going so well. I should do a mid-year resolution check-in soon...
Yum! A lot of those sound delicious just by the ingredient list! I laughed out loud about your husband picking root vegetables in May... he must know what he likes, regardless of season ;)
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