Refrigerator Cookies, p. 895

Last Christmas I decided it would be fun to make cookies. I made the dough a few weeks early, froze the dough, and then a couple days before Christmas cooked and decorated them with our nieces.

We had a great time and the cookies were delicious.

Quick-Braised Fish Fillets in Tomato Sauce, p. 570

An easy, tasty dish I made last summer. I used grouper and served over rice with green beans.

Curried Rice Noodles with Chicken, p. 556

Another bad-blogger post. I made this recipe November 2013. No picture.

Notes: made with chicken. good.

I really shouldn’t even post this.

Stir-Fried Noodles with Meat and Vegetables, p. 554

This was one of those recipes I was supposed to post about last summer and then didn’t. Whoops.

I made this dish on October 29th, 2013. Whoops.

My notes: good. couple use more flavor… maybe more ginger.

But hey, here’s a picture! It looks tasty.

Real Refried Beans, p. 418

Last summer (hangs my head down in shame) I made real refried beans. Since it was last May (again, shame), here are my notes: good. Added garlic, omitted onion.

Here I served it with spicy orange shrimp and sauteed corn with tomatoes. Yum.

Roasted Acorn Squash Halves, p. 368

We received several acorn squashes in our CSA share last fall. Typically I just put some butter and maybe some maple syrup on them and call it a day. But this recipe suggested orange juice which was a fresh alternative. Great alternative to our usually overly sweet recipe.

Curried Coconut Eggplant with Potatoes, p. 296

I had high hopes for this recipe. I love curries. Eggplant is not our favorite, so I hoped that the curry flavor would make up for the eggplant.

Using eggplant up from our CSA, I also added green beans to the dish per the suggestion in the header. The dish took about an hour to make, and according to my note was “good.” Bryan now hates eggplant, so I’m not sure if we’ll be making it again.

Black Beans with Orange, p. 419

My dis-love of beans has been well documented on this blog, so I won’t state it again. This dish was surprising though. I loved it. Ate it up and asked for more. And then I ate the leftovers.

I added some cooked Italian sausage, which is more along the related recipe of Black Beans with Crisp Pork and Orange, but not quite. The flavor was amazing and the consistency perfect. Not too soupy, but not straight beans and pork. Yum.

Banana Bread, p. 842-843

I love a good banana bread. So delicious and I never feel too guilty about eating it as it has fruit in it.

With some leftover bananas I decided to try my hand at banana bread. This was only the second time for me to make it, and the first with this recipe.

Notes: Good. Very moist. Used all regular flour, double pecans, no coconut.

Whoever heard of putting coconut in banana bread?! Only pecans and occasionally chocolate chips deserve to be in banana bread. End of story.

Beet Greens with Double Garlic, p. 316

With my first CSA bag this year we got beets with greens still attached. Beets are my new favorite vegetable. Greens though, I’m not sure what to do about them. I’m not typically a greens eater. Occasionally I’ll prepare some sauteed spinach, but that’s about it.

One of the nice things about the How To Cook Everything app is you can search by ingredient and it will put up recipes that use the ingredient. This recipe originally recommended Dandelion Greens, but beet greens were another vegetable it suggested you could use.

Unfortunately in the preparation of this recipe I think I might have fried my greens. They turned out to be super cripsy, yet still delicious. I’ll have to try it again next time I get beet greens.