Redo!

We just made the “White Bean and Spinach soup”:http://www.metacookbook.com/archives/15-7-White-Bean-and-Spinach-Soup.html from early June again today.

I decided to make it again because I realized we had everything on hand (even though I swore we wouldn’t use canned beans again), and it’d be fast. It wasn’t as fast as I thought it would be, but it was still pretty fast and tasty.

It wasn’t as good as last time. I blame, partially, that I forgot to add the salt right away. It didn’t really have as much time to marry the flavors together.

Finally, we did have nutmeg and cheese on hand for garnishing this time. Totally not worth it. The nutmeg added an extremely odd note to the dish, especially on the occasions I got a strong mouthful of it.… Continue reading →

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest

Another that Natasha brought in. I was dubious at first due to the goofy fonts and layout, but it’s a cute book, and at least some of the dishes we’ve made from it have been good. It’s a source of nice healthy vegetarian food.

Note, we have the second edition (linked with the picture), but the third edition (The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest)
is probably what you want if you buy a copy. Our 1995 one is nice and cheap used though!

Number of recipes in this book: 208 (estimated)
Number we’ve cooked: 2

As always, you can click on the “enchanted broccoli forest” tag below to see what we’ve made from this book.… Continue reading →

[7] White Bean and Spinach Soup

Enchanted Broccoli Forest

The soup I was originally contemplating after we received our first CSA share called for escarole (which we didn’t have), but said we could substitute just about any green for the escarole, including kale and spinach. Since we got what appeared to be an obscene amount of spinach in the first CSA, that’s what we did.

In reality, we only got about a half-obscene amount of spinach, since we got a little over half the amount of greens the recipe called for (and that was truly copious). While we could have, and maybe should have, rounded it out with kale, we instead decided to cook just half the recipe. The only thing that wasn’t super easily halved was the bay leaf, and I just tossed in a small one as my solution.… Continue reading →

[4] Orange & Sesame Dressing

Enchanted Broccoli Forest

It turns out, for those who were waiting with bated breath, that the correct answer was neither salmon nor soup. It was salad.

Bill and I realized that we would rather go to the store to pick out side-dishes and such together than for me to just head out midday and do it alone. So, back to the drawing board to determine what we were having for dinner. Given we had a giant pile of lettuce, I decided our best bet was a salad. Unfortunately, all the salad recipes we have in the books call for ingredients we didn’t have, which was basically useless.

Luckily, in digging through The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, I found a whole section on salad dressings. I have to admit, that was the point at which I said, “A recipe!… Continue reading →