3-5: Creamy Cheese Soup

3-5: Creamy Cheese Soup

Here’s a question for you: is cheese soup really soup? To me, it’s essentially the sauce from macaroni and cheese, thinned down and maybe dressed up with some onions or bacon. Often potato or broccoli gets added as well, in an attempt to “healthify” it. No matter what, it just seems…indulgent. I was on my own to make and eat 3-5: Creamy Cheese Soup, so I kept this one simple.

Don’t get me wrong–I do enjoy broccoli cheese soup (and make one every few months or so for work), but leek & cheese (which this one is) doesn’t excite me as much. This one was a bit leek-y for me, but maybe I just lack appreciation for the leek.


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11-26: Fish Gumbo

11-26: Fish Gumbo

I’ve often talked during this project about my mother and her predilection towards recipe experimentation. One of these instances was where she attempted to make gumbo–I’m not sure where she got the recipe from, but I remember the family failing to choke down poorly cooked okra and my father making a quick run to KFC while she surreptitiously got rid of the rest.

The mere mention of gumbo usually brings this unsavory memory back, and so I attempted 11-26: Fish Gumbo with a fair amount of trepidation.

Roux is something I’ve covered several times throughout this project, and it’s an essential flavor and texture component of gumbo. Letting a roux brown deepens its flavor, and there’s a fine line between too light and over cooked.


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1-8: Delicious Cocktail Snacks

1-8: Delicious Cocktail Snacks

I recently attended a birthday party, and was tasked with making some of the dishes for the party (as is usually the case). Seeing as some of the guests were “old-school” about their dining preferences, I decided to use up some of the more “old-school” recipes. 1-8: Delicious Cocktail Snacks looks exactly like something a waiter would be carrying around at a fancy cocktail party in an old movie.

So retro. These were pretty easy to make, and actually held really well in the fridge before the party. I reheated them at the party and it worked great–just a thought if you need something for a party that you can make earlier, transport and/or reheat later.


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11-4: Calzone with Seafood

11-4: Calzone with Seafood

Here’s one from the Fish & Seafood chapter, which I haven’t delved into for awhile. 11-4: Calzone with Seafood sounds rather strange on paper, and was in fact strange in reality. If you’re picturing a pizza-like calzone with tomato sauce…think again.

If you’ve come here from a search engine looking for a good seafood calzone recipe (which apparently a lot of you do), here’s the TL;DR–the crust and overall cooking method are decent on this recipe, but be prepared to come up with your own fillings. Oh, and if you’re wondering what the heck this site is, read this.

They’ll mention later that the dough is really what they want you to get out of this recipe–the filling is a variable. Knowing that now (after I followed their suggestions), I would have definitely made some adjustments.


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2-26: Corn & Wild Rice Salad

2-26: Corn & Wild Rice Salad

In the mood for more corn after 3-14: Creamy Corn Chowder? It’s still not quite corn season yet, but if you’ve got some frozen corn hanging out in the freezer, you can feel like it’s summer with 2-26: Corn & Wild Rice Salad.

This would be a great recipe to make for a summer BBQ or picnic–it’s healthy, pretty, and as they say above, easy to make. It feels incredibly out of season now (February), but therein lies the magic of the Internet–you might find this in June or July and it’ll be perfect then.


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11-12: Creamy Sautéed Shrimp

11-12: Creamy Sautéed Shrimp

Alright. This is my FAVORITE recipe out of this entire book (at least, as far as I know). My mom always referred to it as “Shrimp Something”, but its official name is 11-12: Creamy Sautéed Shrimp. 

You can tell by the state of the card how often we cooked this recipe. This was always a big deal for me when I was a kid and my mom would make this dish.

I also cooked this one for my husband (then-boyfriend) when we were first dating, as a “here’s who I am” kind of a thing. What I’m trying to say is that this dish has a lot of feels attached to it.


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