what we’ve been cooking (and eating)

With the overall return of my appetite after a horrid 4-month or so spell of morning sickness, I’ve finally had the energy and desire to get back in the kitchen and try some new recipes.
There have been a couple of misses/outright failures along the way, but we’ve found some keepers, too.

• I’m wanting to broaden my slow cooker recipe repertoire before the new baby arrives, so one of the first recipes I tried was this Chicken Tikka Masala.  I also made a vegetarian version in a second slow cooker using garbanzos in place of the chicken.  I didn’t make the cucumber relish included in the recipe; instead I made a yogurt raita, as well as this naan bread.  We served the masala over brown rice, and overall, everyone liked it.  I think I would like this one even more if the main flavoring came from curry, rather than garam masala—I’ll probably play around with it a little bit.

• Way back before baby squelched any desire I had to eat vegetables (or anything else healthy), I purchased two cookbooks with the intent of planning healthier meals based on in season produce. I finally cracked open my copy of Love Soup and made the first recipe I’d planned to make before I started getting sick: White Bean and Garlic Soup with Greens.  I used kale instead of Swiss chard, and didn’t have quite enough white beans on hand, so the beans to greens ratio wasn’t quite to my liking.  Still, this was flavorful and filling soup that we ate with two different kinds of focaccia bread.  I cut the cooking time way down by using frozen, pre-cooked white beans; and do you see that big chunk of garlic up there?  Yummy!

• Definitely the biggest hit during these recent recipe adventures (at least with the two adults in the house) has been The Pioneer Woman’s Taco Pizza.  It uses refried black beans as the “sauce” (absolutely delicious, by the way); fresh toppings like lettuce and tomato are added after baking.  Surprisingly, the recipe doesn’t call for any hamburger, which had my meat-loving, taco-pizza aficionado Cowboy immediately on the defensive.  He ate several pieces sans hamburger before trying to improve upon the recipe by taking hamburger from the other pizza on the table and adding it to his taco pizza.  Shockingly, he promptly declared that the hamburger did not improve the original recipe—you don’t know how big that is, people!  As the official pizza cutter in the family, he did have one suggestion: add the sour cream/ salsa dressing after cutting the pizza to avoid a big mess.  Last night was our second go-round with this recipe, and I had to chastise him for eating directly from the pizza pan—basically his pizza slices never made it to his plate .  This recipe has earned a permanent spot in our regular pizza night line up.

Have you discovered any new recipes lately that are keepers?