At the end of March, I apparently wasn’t totally feeling the cooking vibe and definitely didn’t have a photo vibe. I have like three food pictures! But I did do a little cooking.
This week, I experimented with some protein bars based off a recipe I found on NYT Cooking. I made a few changes, substituting some ingredients I felt gave it more oomph or things we just know the kid likes. I haven’t tasted them because they have coconut in them and I’m severely allergic, but they got rave reviews. Here is the original recipe if you are interested. I used sunbutter because it is what I had. I also used dried figs instead of cherries, again, because I had them and I substituted chia seeds for the sunflower seeds.
I also tried my hand again at black bean burgers. These came out really well. I think the trick is really getting the spices right. I made so much that I froze half of it uncooked for later. However, I made the burgers up right away and put lettuce and tomato along with a nice aioli that I made from a bourbon mustard and some mayo. The kid ate it despite it having the sauce, so that was a win! And I served them with roasted Brussels sprouts, so we got the veggies in there!
I made my vodka sauce again. For some reason, this batch was not quite as good as it usually is. I added peas, which I liked, but the heat was not as there as normal. And it definitely reheated poorly. I tried using this fancy pasta we had gotten and the pasta kind of turned to mush on reheat. I think I’ll stick with penne in the future.
When I look at the calendar for what else we had that week, I have to admit I lied. I know I didn’t make several of the items listed on the menu calendar because I would have taken photos of them. They were obviously ambitions that just weren’t met that particular week. We had a lot of leftovers and some taquitos and some take out. Some weeks just go like that.
Foodie's Delimma 