Last week I tried a few budget recipes from
Smitten Kitchen because I was tired of all of my dinner recipes and I have found that her recipes rarely disappoint. Of course, I have no pictures of any of these meals, as it's hard enough to actually make dinner with a small person wrapped around your leg, let alone to take post-worthy pictures of the process. I also have this fear that if I photograph while I cook, with the intent of later blogging about it, disaster will ensue. This superstition was proven to be true when, a few weeks back, I got the idea to take pictures while making one of our favorite easy and delicious snacks--baked sweet potatoes.
Beautiful, huh? Wait 'til you see the finished product.
Appetizing? Hmmm...not so much.
(For a proper baked sweet potato recipe, check out
Barefoot in the Kitchen's latest post.)
Anyway, here is a list of the recipes I tried and my thoughts on each, if you're looking to try something new...
Easiest Baked Mac and CheeseDelicious! A winner! Probably not the healthiest thing you could feed your family, but it was easy and so tasty. To cut down the cost even more, I used about 2/3 Cabot Extra Sharp Cheddar and 1/3 Shredded Mexican Cheese Blend from Costco. I added a tad more dried mustard. I used lowfat cottage cheese because that was what I had on hand. It was good and it was easy.
Arroz con Pollo
This is the Cuban version of what was one of our favorite dishes while living in Costa Rica. I almost skipped the chorizo, but it was on sale at Henry's last week, so I picked some up. I'm glad I did. It added a lot of flavor. I used brown rice instead of white and that added about 45 minutes to the cooking time. I also used skinless, boneless chicken breasts because that is what I had in the freezer. I didn't include all of the spices because I didn't have them all in my spice rack and I didn't think Zeke would like the paprika (although Jeff and I both agreed it would have been better with that extra spicy kick). Even with the omission of some important spices, it still had a lot of flavor and we really liked it.
Asparagus, Goat Cheese and Lemon PastaThis recipe was extremely easy and pretty inexpensive. The guys weren't big fans, though. I didn't love it either. I think I wasn't too thrilled about the combination of goat cheese and lemon. I did think the cheese melted very nicely into a creamy sauce. I would make a variation of this in the future, but maybe try sundried tomatoes and pesto mixed with the goat cheese rather than tarragon and lemon.
Black Bean SoupKatie made this a couple of days before I did and said it was just alright. So, I followed part of Smitten's recipe and part of Katie's recipe (Katie makes delicious black bean soup). I sauteed the onion (I used yellow, not red--again, it's what I had on hand) and the garlic and added it to the beans and the chipotle chiles. Put it all in the crock pot and it was ready in about 3 1/2 hours. I couldn't believe I could put dried beans in the crock pot and have them ready that fast. It was too easy. We ate it with fried plantains and crema (no cumin--just plain old crema). We also added avocado and cheese to the soup (a Katie recommendation). It was really good. The chipotles added some heat which we really liked. I think we will have this at least twice a month. It was by far the least expensive of the four recipes and it was also probably the easiest.
After trying all of those recipes, Zeker's favorite is still the
pasta and tomato sauce recipe from a couple of weeks back. So, we had it again last night.
