I don’t know about you, but my grandma is not much of a baker. Or a cook. In fact, if it can’t be cooked in a microwave, she’s really not that interested. However, someone at Simply Delicious must have had a grandma who liked to bake, since they included 17-36: Grandma’s Spice Cake.
I suppose they called it Grandma’s Spice Cake because it’s “old-fashioned”. Regardless of if an actual grandma baked/created this, it’s actually pretty good.
5-23: Cheese Pie with Tomatoes comes with a bit of a story. About 10 years ago, I spent a week in Chattanooga, Tennessee with my college friend/roommate and his family. His aunt (who was hosting us) attempted to teach me some of her Southern-style recipes while we were there, and one of them was something called “tomato pie”.
Her tomato pie involved a pie crust, tomatoes, a JAR of Hellmann’s (it was the South), and a whole bag of shredded cheese. This one is slightly less heart-attack-inducing.
Here’s a yummy take on baked potatoes. These have been done before, but I’ve seen them referred to as hasselback potatoes.
Most of the hasselback potato recipes you’ll find don’t have cheese on top, so props to Simply Delicious for thinking outside the potato box. Or bag, as it were.
7-28: Pork Chops with Rosemary is a pretty simple pork chop recipe that’s good for a quick dinner. We buy the big packs of chops from Costco, so we always have to come up with different ways to prepare them.
Along with the abundance of pork, we’ve been growing and drying our own rosemary–it’s WAY more potent and flavorful than the packaged stuff from the market. If you have to choose, go with the fresh over the dried–it’ll taste so much better.
Here’s one I’ve made in the past–there’s even my Sharpie notations to prove it. I remember making 6-40: Peppercorn Chicken Breasts for my mom, since she’s not a red meat eater and I was making another recipe from this book for everyone else that was heavy on meat. I’ll cover that one eventually, and update this to reflect that. 😉
My notations claim that it’s easy. It is, when you use the right ingredients. If you don’t, it gets a bit tougher…
The other recipe I cooked before I took an extended break (the first being 3-2: New England Clam Chowder) would be these Cheese Sticks. I think this was one of those “burn off leftover ingredients” recipes.
Think of these Cheese Sticks as kind of like big Cheetos. This recipe is Card #15 in Subgroup #5 (Eggs & Cheese), found in Book 1.
It’s feeling a bit unbalanced around here–we need more from the back of the book. Here’s one from a brand new group: Pies & Cakes. Just in time for the cooler weather, we have 16-47: Orange-Almond Pie.
This came out really well: it tasted great, and you can make it in a toaster oven!
In 13-10: Zucchini Piccata, I had mentioned that I ended up with more zucchini than I could use in that recipe. Here’s what I did with the rest: I made 4-22: Zucchini Pancakes. I’ve made recipes similar to this before, but this one’s pretty standard.
These things are pretty good even if you’re not that into vegetables. Think of it as a healthier version of 4-17: Crispy Potato Pancakes.
Here’s a recipe I’ve actually made before–it’s been a while since we’ve seen one of those. When I was about 8 or 9, my mom decided that she, my dad, and I were going to take turns making dinner each week. One of the recipes I actually planned for and made (before this grand plan inevitably fell apart) was this one: 12-7: Fettuccini with Creamy Chicken.
I probably was drawn to this one because my favorite meal as a kid was fettuccini Alfredo, and this one seems relatively similar (to an 9-year old). I also remember being fascinated with the fact that I got to use alcohol in something.
Schnitzel has been a favorite of mine ever since I went on a trip with my family to Israel when I was 13 (I chose that instead of the party–I never say no to a chance to travel, especially abroad). Obviously, they didn’t serve a lot of pork schnitzel there, but 7-50: Parma Schnitzel is a good version all the same.
This is a quasi-Italian-style schnitzel, which according to Wikipedia, is one of the few countries that schnitzel is not a cuisine of. Well, this one’s good anyway.