17-5: Hot Seedy Rolls

17-5: Hot Seedy Rolls

We’ve finally reached the big day: 17-5: Hot Seedy Rolls were the fifth dish I cooked for my big Thanksgiving feast (TGV 2016), and in true baker fashion, I started them before the sun rose on Thanksgiving Thursday. These served as my rolls for my dinner–I served them with a tomato butter and a roasted garlic & herb butter.

I wanted something a bit healthier to balance out the sugar in the cranberries and in the desserts (two of which were 15-49: Chocolate Pudding Deluxe and 16-52: Apple Nut Saucepan Torte). These were definitely seedy, but I think it worked well for a harvest-themed dinner such as Thanksgiving.

Other dishes I made the day of Thanksgiving (Thur. 11/24): 1-5: Pigs in a Blanket, a crudité platter, 6-29: Stuffed Turkey, along with assembling & heating all the other dishes.


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6-33: Lime-Marinated Chicken

6-33: Lime-Marinated Chicken

Two-packs of whole chickens were on sale at Costco and the other chicken in this pack was used to make 6-20: Rosemary Chicken. This recipe, 6-33: Lime-Marinated Chicken required me to rub a few brain cells together to prepare the chicken as written on the card.

Lime flavor added to anything is a winner with me. Chicken and lime is a great combination, the white wine sauce added a unique twist.


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13-14: Wok-Fried Veggies with Pasta

13-14: Wok-Fried Veggies with Pasta

13-14: Wok-Fried Veggies with Pasta is yet another dish where the preparation requires too much chopping. One of my specialties happens to be stir-fry. I can make stir-fry with the best of them.

I’ve made wok fried dishes similar to this on my own, but with chicken or beef. Usually, I think vegetarian food is best left to the rabbits. 🐰


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9-27: West Indian Meat Casserole

9-27: West Indian Meat Casserole

If you had told me as a kid that I would eat meat and bananas together in a dish, I would have called you, “crazy”! Some cuckoo chef over at Simply Delicious is playing a weird joke on people with 9-27: West Indian Meat Casserole, but this dish is rated mostly edible. Jamie wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. 🍌

I don’t really see how this dish is festive. It also isn’t very attractive, at least, not in the way I prepared it.


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5-33: Omelette Stacks with Rice

5-33: Omelette Stacks with Rice

Hey there. October’s been a crazy busy month IRL so far, but I’ve got some entries banked that I’ll start posting, so expect some more entries coming soon. This one, 5-33: Omelette Stacks with Rice, was a Saturday morning breakfast a few weeks ago that was born out of an abundance of eggs and leftover cooked rice. 🍚

5-33 Omelette Stacks with Rice

Simply Delicious suggests serving it as a main course (presumably for lunch or dinner as opposed to breakfast, to which they seem to be drawing a contrast), but you eat it whenever you like. 🌇


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12-29: New Orleans Beans and Pasta

12-29: New Orleans Beans and Pasta

I wasn’t quite sure how “authentic” 12-29: New Orleans Beans and Pasta would be when first looking this recipe over–Simply Delicious doesn’t exactly nail it on cultural faithfulness a lot of the time. A lot of that has to do with the time at which the books were written–many ingredients, methods, & tools that are easily accessible now were not 30 years ago.

However, this is essentially an American recipe, so I would assume it shouldn’t be that far off–if this is in fact a real New Orleans dish. 🎷

I wonder how many different linens/vases/glasses/odd statues they had to accumulate to photograph all of these different recipes. Just a thought I had while looking at this picture. Another thought: who decided on some of these things? What makes this picture decidedly New Orleans? ⚜🎉


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13-12: Eggplant-Rice Casserole

13-12: Eggplant-Rice Casserole

🍆 13-12: Eggplant-Rice Casserole is a heavier preparation of eggplant than my other eggplant recipe, 13-16: Arabian Moussaka, this rice and eggplant dish is two, two, two dishes in one. I’ll show myself out for that dumb, old reference… 👋

There were lots of colors in this dish: purple 🍆, orange, green, yellow, white, and a few shades of beige.


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9-14: Chili Con Carne

9-14: Chili Con Carne

This recipe card gave me an excuse to cook up a big ol’ batch of 9-14: Chili Con Carne, not that I needed an excuse. I’ve made a few pots of chili in my day, but not one quite like this. My favorite episode of the Simpsons, entitled El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer), features a chili cook-off as a vital plot point. The infamous space coyote scene still cracks me up to this day. 😹

With the peppers featured prominently on the front of the recipe card, Simply Delicious has pointed out the one major issue I had with this dish. WHO PUTS BELL PEPPER IN CHILI? 🌶 Jamie and I enjoy a little spice in our chili. I’ve always wanted to try adding a pepper akin to the “Merciless Pepper of Quetzalacatenango … grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.” 🌶


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12-27: Chicken Broccoli Lasagna

12-27: Chicken Broccoli Lasagna

Here’s something a bit different…and I’m not talking about the recipe. In fact, 12-27: Chicken Broccoli Lasagna itself is pretty boring. But here’s what’s interesting: I made this recipe at work, for work. This one will be a bit of a glance into what I do all day–my other kitchen, if you will.

I usually use ground turkey for ground meat recipes (there’s a few kids with special dietary preferences) and I’ve made lasagna before for work, so this one seemed like a perfect recipe to try to scale up for the amount I need for a daily meal. “Healthy” is what parents are looking for these days when it comes to school lunches–another way this recipe is a good fit. 🍴

EDIT: Full disclosure–this was written in 2016, and I now have a career in a completely non-culinary related field. However, this still serves as a fun reminder of a previous “life”. Enjoy!


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6-2: Fiery Chicken Casserole

6-2: Fiery Chicken Casserole

The whole time I was making 6-2: Fiery Chicken Casserole, I had this image in my head because I thought my sauce came out wrong. My sauce was light colored and the chicken in the photo shows a crispy, golden skin. If you look hard at the bowl in the upper left corner, you can see the white sauce that the authors described.

My version of the casserole came out a lot differently than the image shown on the card and didn’t taste very “fiery”. This dish would need a lot more heat to be considered “fiery”. 🔥


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