Middle of the month

Hey! So its not the end of February yet, but I am going to post the recipes that I tried so far this month for two reasons: 1. I really went to town the first part of the month and made a lot of things and 2. I'm in the hospital and insanely bored out of my mind. Don't worry, nothing critical; I'm fine, the baby's fine and I'll write more about it later, probably when they let me go home. But in the meantime, I'm going to talk about food. This month I decided to give each recipe stars (1-5, 5 being the highest), a completely arbitrary way for me to rate the dishes. Without further ado...

French Style Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Oh my heavens these were delightful. A mixture of leeks, mushrooms, garlic, lemon juice was processed and then stuffed and rolled up into the chicken breasts, pan-browned and a fantastic sauce was also made with it. A little bit of a time consuming recipe, but it really had fantastic flavor. Not usually a huge fan of mushrooms, and I’ve never tried leeks, but it worked. And I think the sauce really added a lot to this recipe, so if you make it, just replace the wine with grape juice cuz its way good. 5 stars.

Source of recipe: Annie Eats

Homemade Chocolate Pudding

Very decadent and chocolately. Nothing super fancy or amazing, but its better than a mix, that’s for sure. The recipe said to strain it when you’re done cooking it, which I did, but I think I would have put it through the mesh sieve again after it was cooled to get out some more lumps. 3 stars

Source of recipe: the food network website

Cream Sauced Pasta with Vegetables

Personally I thought this was a delicious dish with a great combination of stir fried-ish vegetables (zucchini, asparagus, onion, broccoli, tomatoes) with pasta and a heavy cream sauce. The recipe as written was a little bland, but I added in extra spices and herbs until it was a flavor I liked. 4.5 stars

Source of recipe: Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

Homemade Guacamole

I love avocados, and I adore guacamole, but the closest I’ve come to making it myself is mashing an avocado and adding a seasoning packet from the store. I sure did love this recipe! I don’t think there is anything particularly different or special about it compared to other homemade guac recipes you’ll find, but it sure left me satisfied. 5 stars

Source of recipe: The ward cookbook from my home ward (Jackie I'm looking at you!)

Lemon Chicken Pasta Toss

This dish was a nice little twist on chicken, and although it was nothing particularly fancy, I’ve never had something like it and I quite enjoyed the flavors of the dish. I also liked that the chicken was dredged in flour and then pan-fried, and I liked the chicken stock and lemon based coating that went over the noodles and chicken. Not a bad dish at all, easy to make and we’ll probably make it or something like unto it again. 3.5 stars

Source of recipe: Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

Asparagus with Hollandaise Sauce

I had my doubts about how this one would turn out, but I wanted to try it, at least for the hollandaise sauce part. I guess normally hollandaise is a time consuming, whisking over the double boiler sort of sauce to prepare… the one I followed just used a blender, and I don’t know if it really got to the thickness that perhaps ideally it should have been at. I may have to try some different things sometime with this. Maybe. Although it turns out that I really enjoy asparagus. I’m not sure when that happened. Matthew was a good sport and ate exactly one stalk. 1.5 stars (for the sauce)

Source of recipe: Barefoot in Paris Cookbook

Moroccan Couscous

This dish was simple and very easy to make, and boy did I like the flavors. Its essentially just a “hearty” mixture of butternut squash, zucchini, carrots and onions mixed in with couscous. Simple, but I really loved it. Matthew thought it was good too, although he would have had a higher proportion of couscous to veggies (I thought the proportions were great as they were). 4.5 stars

Source of recipe: Barefoot in Paris Cookbook

Brioche

Brioche is a deliciously rich bread they make in France—it doesn’t have a lot of sugar in it, but it has many eggs and much butter (one loaf has 3 eggs and a stick of butter). This recipe turned out exactly how I remember brioche being like. It was definitely a winner, and required little effort to make. And it also makes fantastically delicious caramel French toast. 5 stars

Source of recipe: Barefoot in Paris Cookbook

Well there you go! It was a very good start of the month, if I do say so myself. Probably my favorite recipe of the half-month was the French Stuffed Chicken Breasts. Also, I used 5 ingredients this half-month that I've never cooked with before: mushrooms, leeks, butternut squash, capers and asparagus. Kinda exciting, I guess. I'll probably post the recipes for the Cream Sauced Pasta w/ Veg, Moroccan Couscous and Brioche in a day or two if anyone is interested in them (the cookbooks are at home, I'm at the hospital). Peace!