Violet Sky

Lots of new recipes this month, some hits, and some misses. I’ve been getting the itch to do some more baking beyond my weekly (usually multiple times a week) sourdough, so I’ll have to make more of an effort to find some new baking recipes as well.

New

Shrimp and grits – I’ve made shrimp and grits one time before and didn’t like the recipe, even though I do like shrimp and grits. This was also my first time using quick-cooking grits instead of coarse cornmeal. It was amazing! I will definitely be making this again, though I’m going to experiment with reducing the butter a bit to make it more macro-friendly.

Buffalo chicken pasta – This is remarkably similar to another pasta recipe in our rotation from BudgetBytes, Creamy Cajun Chicken Pasta, but different enough that we ended up saving it for use later. Unlike the Cajun pasta, this one would have been better if I hadn’t left the green onions out the first time – I didn’t the next time I made it.

Chicken egg roll bowl – I love SkinnyTaste, but this recipe was beyond mediocre. It’s a fabulous fit for someone doing bodybuilding or otherwise looking for “bro” meals, but a bad fit for anyone who wants more than bare nutrients in a meal.

Doro wat – One of the hallmarks of Ethiopian wots (from what I’ve seen, at least) is the initial step of cooking onions for over an hour before you even get to the berbere. This recipe was no different, and while it was a perfectly fine recipe, I’m usually looking for more than “fine” when I spend an hour and a half cooking onions.

3 hour bagels – You can thank my cat for this recipe. On Saturday, we bought a new sleeve of Franz plain bagels with our weekly shopping trip. Some time between then and Sunday morning, our cat got ahold of the bag, gnawed open a hole in it, and ate approximately an eighth of the exposed bagel. Since those bagels were my husband’s breakfast plans for the week, I looked up a fast bagel recipe. These were very easy! I have yet to figure out the lighter, fluffier texture in bagels, and this recipe was no different, but it was a good base. I used a duck egg wash to stick sesame seeds to the top.

Easy beef bulgogi – This was a last minute addition at the end of the month. I have another beef bulgogi recipe that I’ve made a couple times, and it’s fine but not great, so I went looking for another one. This was much better – instantly, both my husband and my youngest son said that it was a keeper. And it didn’t involve grating pear!

Revisited

Vegan wedding soup – Since we’re not vegan, I end up de-veganizing this when I make it. I use Knorr’s chicken bouillon instead of vegetable broth, doing 8 tsp of the bouillon to 10 cups of water, and then I make little “meatballs” out of Isernio’s chicken Italian sausage, cook them in the oven while the rest of the soup bubbles, and then toss them in right at the end. I also use red lentils and just boil them for the same amount of time as the Israeli couscous.