12-23: Tortellini with Broccoli

12-23: Tortellini with Broccoli

12-23: Tortellini with Broccoli is yet another Simply Delicious recipe where their idea of a cream sauce is pouring sour cream on top of something warm and stirring it in. When using lactose free sour cream, the sauce comes out too thick. It’s still chunky on top of the pasta. Maybe I need to cook it longer or stir it more, I will keep experimenting to find out. Onto…the recipe!

It had been a while since I ate tortellini and this recipe gives you an idea of how to make a sauce in a pinch. Simply Delicious has other recipes such as 6-2: Fiery Chicken Casserole where the method to make a quick cream sauce is to dump sour cream into the pot.


Read more

8-32: Indian Beef Casserole

8-32: Indian Beef Casserole

8-32: Indian Beef Casserole is an affront to Indian cooking worldwide. It is a dish that barely any Indian people would actually eat because it contains beef! 🐮

During my brief trip to India, I actually ate some beef served by the hotel which was spiced similar to this dish. This hotel served beef because it hosted a lot of travelers from USA and Europe who usually eat beef. Indian culture perceives the cow as sacred and a significant portion of the population observes a vegetarian diet. 🇮🇳


Read more

12-17: Curly Pasta with Creamy Chicken

12-17: Curly Pasta with Creamy Chicken

12-17: Curly Pasta with Creamy Chicken sounds like a recipe my mom or I would have attempted back in the days we were cooking out of this book–it’s possible we did and never marked the card. Both of us were suckers for dishes just like this. 🐓

I probably would have made this recipe earlier if curly pasta was easier to come by–I wanted to find just the right shape for this dish. I have a fascination with different pasta shapes. 🍝

4/13/19 EDIT: Speaking of pasta shapes, take a look at the cover photo for the very similar 12-7: Fettuccini with Creamy Chicken and the one above. Notice anything strange?


Read more

13-6: Mushroom Stroganoff

13-6: Mushroom Stroganoff

When you think “stroganoff”, you usually conjure up images of a dish with beef (or ground turkey, if you grew up in my house). Simply Delicious does have a beef version (8-12: Beef Stroganoff), but they also have a vegetarian version–13-6: Mushroom Stroganoff.

My picture and their picture look very different–I think mine looks more like stroganoff than theirs does, though. Maybe they didn’t think it photographed well?


Read more

7-7: Mushroom-Stuffed Pork Rolls

7-7: Mushroom-Stuffed Pork Rolls

If you haven’t figured it out by now, Simply Delicious uses mushrooms pretty heavily throughout their recipes–about 20% of the recipes I’ve covered so far have involved them. I wasn’t a big mushroom eater when I was a kid, but I’ve (slowly) begun warming up to them. 7-7: Mushroom-Stuffed Pork Rolls aren’t especially fancy, but they’re not a bad option for lunch, dinner, or even making in a large batch for a party.

This is the first recipe (of 160+ at this point) that uses sage, described as being “savory & slightly peppery.” I like using sage with mushrooms (along with parsley, rosemary, & thyme–the “essential herbs,” according to Simon & Garfunkel), as the earthy flavors of both complement each other well.🌿


Read more

12-41: Spaghetti with Green Sauce

12-41: Spaghetti with Green Sauce

Green sauce can mean a lot of different things (pesto, chimichurri, etc.), but for 12-41: Spaghetti with Green Sauce, it features leek tops. Because this recipe is so light, I made this dish for a quick lunch during the week.

The sauce in the photo doesn’t look as green as a pesto, but it definitely is green.


Read more

3-3: French Onion Soup

3-3: French Onion Soup

It’s the middle of summer right now, so soup’s probably not your first thought. However, I continue to be surprised that how no matter how hot outside it is, people still enjoy soup. So here’s a classic: 3-3: French Onion Soup.

Simply Delicious cites Les Halles (the Parisian farmers’ market, not the NY restaurant where Anthony Bourdain worked) as the originator of French onion soup. I wasn’t able to directly verify that with 5 minutes of lazy Googling, but I did find a food timeline that gives a bit of the dish’s history–I suppose their claim is totally still possible.


Read more

9-18: Stuffed Onions

9-18: Stuffed Onions

Never before did I think, “Boy, I should stuff some onions and eat them.” 9-18: Stuffed Onions were not the easiest dish to prepare and I don’t think I would ever choose to prepare it again.

This dish did taste exactly like meat loaf. It is a lot easier to make a meat loaf than to stuff onions, so next time, I’ll get the loaf pan out and chop the onions up.


Read more

8-11: Sirloin Steak Baked In Foil

8-11: Sirloin Steak Baked In Foil

I have never cooked steak using the method in this recipe, 8-11: Sirloin Steak Baked in Foil, before and I probably would never cook them this way again. I like all the extra garnish, but it is a pain to cut and prepare that many vegetables for people to pick around to get to the main ingredient, the BEEF. 🐮

I used the red wine suggestion on the card, but I felt like I should have used beef broth to keep the beef-y flavor. This recipe also keeps a trend going, sticking with the foil pouch cooking method that Jamie used in the previous recipe on here, 6-25: Salmon-Filled Chicken Breasts.


Read more

12-18: Mushroom Risotto

12-18: Mushroom Risotto

12-18: Mushroom Risotto is another recipe with a loose definition of risotto. This one didn’t even ask you to cook the rice in wine, just broth. I already had some mushroom broth infused white rice on hand, but the recipe called for brown rice.

This ended up being a dish that tastes very similar to the 12-41: Spaghetti with Green Sauce recipe that I cooked recently. Mushrooms and basil give this dish an earthy flavor. 🍄


Read more