This is not my first time to the broccoli soup rodeo, so 3-33: Broccoli Wild Rice Soup should be a snap. 🏇🏼 A while back, I made 3-21: Broccoli-Celery Soup and broccoli is still in season at the time I am writing this post.
Cold isn’t my favorite temperature when eating soup, but with so much sour cream, the soup may separate during reheating. ❄
I think Simply Delicious was aimed at the working-mom demographic primarily–a lot of the recipes focus on easy weeknight meals just as much as the fancy dinner party options. 7-14: Easy-to-Make Pork Casserole is a casserole in the sense of a casserole being a bunch of random stuff thrown together in a vessel and then heated.
Casseroles are typically defined as the traditional green bean or tuna types that we (by that I mean mostly Americans) associate with that word. This dish is a loose mixing of vegetables and pork cubes, and is honestly much more reminiscent of 7-55: Sunday Pork Stew than of “casserole”. My mom seemed to like it though, when she made it back in April of 1992.
Finally, an appetizer from the first section of the book. Another story for you: in my first apartment after I graduated college and moved back home to LA, I threw an 80s Valentine’s Day party, and 1-22: Onion-Potato Diamonds were one of the appetizers I made for it–another was 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes.
Look at them. Something about them just screams 1980s cocktail party to me. This time around, I made them to take to a get-together I was attending, along with 17-36: Grandma’s Spice Cake. Both ended up being big hits.
5-1: Mushroom and Cheese Pie…didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Following directions is important, friends. Let’s dive in–we’re still in Book 1, Group 1 (Appetizers & Starters).
We got a lot of mushrooms in our CSA box this round, and I used the Maitake mushrooms for another recipe from this book, but forgot to photograph it. And as the internet says, “pics or it didn’t happen”. So, I decided to use the White Beech mushrooms for this recipe.
First mistake. Of several.