Bye Bye March

Holy cow guys. March is OVER. That means my kid is officially a full month closer to being SIX and my little guy is just a few weeks away from being 3. And the sun is setting on another cookbook. I really enjoyed Moosewood’s Simple Suppers. I completed seven recipes and reported on five: Banana Cupcakes, Fish Po’ Boys, Shrimp Curry, Spinach Cheese Burritos and the Polenta Peppers. And there are more I’d still like to try. 6/7 recipes were AWESOME. I still need to post about the Butterscotch cookies I made (oooooh, aaah). Unfortunately, the last recipe I tried was the dud of the bunch (so no recipe forthcoming). It sounded so promising, too!

This is the Pine Nut Crusted fish … a simple breading of pine nuts, lemon zest and bread crumbs. It smelled so great but was a pretty lifeless dish. Needed a lot of salt to taste good and even then, it was just kind of meh … not the sum of its tasty parts for sure!!

I was looking forward to trying the Thai Street Food Cookbook my step-mom-in-law got me for Christmas. But I hit a snag this weekend. When I was trying to sort out what to make … all the recipes require things like cilantro with roots, tamarind, lemon grass, whole fish, etc. As much as I would love to try these recipes, incorporating them into my weekly cooking is out of the question – we already go to two stores for groceries and we can’t add in a weekly trip to the Asian foods market (we have about three good ones in our city and the closest is over 30 min away from my white-bread (bred?) suburb. I thought briefly about substituting one of the other two Asian cookbooks in my possession, but they presented the same problem. I am thinking they probably don’t have a place in my library, what with the recipes available on the internet.

So I decided to push this cookbook to the back burner and I’ve moved up Jaime Oliver’s cookbook, Jaime’s Dinners that I had been planning on for May. I think I will rotate my camping cookbook into May instead (or maybe switch up the grilling cookbook since it looks like grilling season will be here sooner rather than later!). A few things I’m thinking about making:

  1. Banana and Blueberry French Toast
  2. Smoked Salmon Sandwich
  3. Chicken Legs with Sweet Tomatoes
  4. Tasty Fish Bake
  5. Scented English Creams

I’m sure I’ll make up the rest as I go along.