Today is Secret Recipe Club reveal day! I was assigned Searching for Spice, written by Corina – a mother of two (I love the nicknames she gives her kids: Little Miss Spice and Master Spice). She loves international cuisine, making food from India, Mexico, North Africa, Thailand, and China. She prefers to stick to recipes that aren’t terribly time consuming – like this Italian Chicken and Lemon dish, this Lamb Meatball dish, and this Chicken Pie. But sometimes, she will go for a more complicated recipe, too – like this Chicken Biryani and this Cassoulet with Confit Duck.
I ended up choosing this Korean Bulgogi recipe, because I just recently discovered Korean BBQ, and it is awesome! Bulgogi is definitely my favorite thing to order, so I loved that Corina had a recipe I could try. She served it with rice and lettuce to make wraps, I decided (inspired by my Spam dish) to make it a rice bowl, topped with a fried egg. It turned out great! (more…)
There is an extra Monday in February this year, so you get and extra Secret Recipe Club Post! Extra posts are themed and the theme for this one was Easter or St Patrick’s Day. I went for Easter with these Peeps Marshmallow Stuffed Cookies from Burnt Apple.
The author has 3 picky children and a husband with Type 1 diabetes, so she has a lot to deal with, plus she focuses on healthy cooking on top of that – wow! She has shared her recipes with Whole Foods and on TV, which is a huge deal. Of course, I picked one of the very few not healthy recipes on her blog, but I just couldn’t help myself.
First off, you will need Peeps bunnies. The recipe stated not to use chicks and, while I’m not sure why, I didn’t want to risk it. So bunnies it was! Of course, they aren’t in stores yet, but I was able to order them on Amazon. (more…)
For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I was assigned Oh! You Cook! (Which is such a cute name.) In addition to writing the blog, Dena has also authored The Everything Kosher Slow Cooker Cookbook – how cool is that?! As you can imagine, her recipes are kosher, but that doesn’t mean that you have to be in order to enjoy them!
I’m gonna be honest with you guys – I totally messed up this pie, in three different steps. Ugh. More on that later. But as it turns out, it didn’t even matter – it still came out super delicious! So I definitely call that a win.
We are doing a special Holiday Treats edition of the Secret Recipe Club! My assigned blog was I am a Honey Bee written by Nicole. We both live on the East coast and share a love of Buffy, tattoos, Greece, eggs bene, and a fear of open water and having to open gifts in front of others. I like that her blog includes reviews in addition to recipes, just like mine!
Anyway, I went to look for desserts on her blog and noticed a page called The Year of Pies, where she posted a pie recipes every week for a year. A year! I didn’t to look at any other category, ladies and gentlemen, I was home. But would it be caramel pie? One of four differentkinds of chesspie? Maybe Reese’s or Thin Mint pie? So many to choose from! It was around this time that I began to feel woefully inadequate for my own dessert selection, and sorry for whoever drew my blog… I hope you were able to find something!
I scrolled down to the end of the year to look for holiday dessert and saw this No Bake Eggnog Pudding Pie. I love eggnog! And easy recipes! I wanted to make this right away. (more…)
It’s Secret Recipe Club time again! This month I was assigned Sarah’s Kitchen – a name that I love, obviously. Sarahs of the world unite! Sarah is from England, but now lives in Texas – which is kind of funny because I’m from Texas and once lived in Ireland (which I realize is not the same as England, but is geographically/culturally similar). Spooky.
First, make sure that you are using good quality salmon. I refuse to eat farmed Atlantic salmon, and wild caught Alaskan can be expensive. So I usually opt for the farmed Norwegian or Icelandic, which never fails to be thick and fatty – yum.
First you will cook shallots in butter, then add Prosecco and thyme to make a poaching broth. Then, you will carefully place the salmon into the broth and spoon hot liquid over the top until cooked to your liking (Melissa and I both prefer medium). (more…)
It’s time for another Secret Recipe Club post! This month, my assignment was The Tasty Cheapskate. Food was not a big focus for Jean growing up, neither eating it nor cooking it, which is pretty much the opposite of my childhood. Luckily all that changed for her as an adult. Now she focuses on whole foods and budget friendly family meals. She even did a challenge where she fed her 6 person family on $6 a day! Incredible!
Looking through her blog, I found a lot of yummy baked goods. Like a bunch of different pull-apart breads, but especially this coconut and lime one. Also zucchini bread with lemon or with coconut. And self frosting nutella pumpkin muffins – shut the front door! But despite all those yummy delights, what I really wanted was a nice healthy meal – so my eyes lit up when I saw this Broccoli Barley Casserole. And I was even more excited when I saw that the original recipe used farro, which I have been meaning to start using for a long time, and that it could be made in one pot.
Start by sauteing onions and garlic in a Dutch oven. Then add the farro and allow to toast a bit.
Add in frozen spinach, water, and vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until the liquid is almost all gone and the farro is tender but still chewy, about 20 minutes. (more…)
It’s time for another Secret Recipe Club reveal! This month I was assigned Amy’s Cooking adventures, a blog that I recognize from my other blog circle – Food ‘n Flix. As I was looking into Amy’s blog in more depth and reading her bio, I started to feel like I knew her. I, too, came to cooking later in life. I, too, have a masters but chose to stay at home (as a homemaker for now and hopefully a mother soon). I, too, am an avid reader (and a huge geek/nerd in general). I love that Amy posts a list of what she has been reading, and I love the books on those lists, too! Her writing is very open and conversational and makes you feel like you are an old friend – what a treat!
I was really tempted to go with these Pesto Mozzarella Burgers on Tomato Basil Buns, maybe paired with a Roasted Blueberry Basil Margarita. But then I saw that she had a ton of s’mores based recipes! I love s’mores so much! Would I go with s’mores brownies, cupcakes, or a frappuccino? So many choices! I eventually settled on cookies, but Amy has not 1, not 2, but 3 s’mores cookie recipes. I decided to go with the 3rd and most recent recipe, because Amy said it’s the best one and I trust her judgement.
They are a chocolate base with chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, and graham cracker bits – and they really taste like s’mores! You can store them in an airtight container, but I liked them best the first day, when the graham crackers were still crunchy.
They also have a secret ingredient – chocolate pudding mix! I’ve used pudding mix in cakes and ice cream before, but hadn’t thought about it for cookies – what a great idea! They came out really fudgy and moist. I really didn’t make any changes at all to this recipe, it’s perfect! (more…)
It’s my first Secret Recipe Club post!!! I had been wanting to join the SRC for a while, but wasn’t sure that I met the posting requirements, because I don’t always post every week. I also didn’t have a recipe index for a long time, so that is something that I have been working on. I finally felt like the time was right and asked to join, and here I am with my first post! Yay!
My assigned blog was Renee’s Kitchen Adventures, and I had such a great time looking through it. Renee is a stay-at-home mom and former nurse (labor and delivery – what a special unit!), and her story reminded me a lot of my mother. She talks about trying to be healthy and lose weight, and posts healthy recipes based on Weight Watchers points. I, too, am trying to be healthy and lose weight, so I loved that about this blog. Even though our ideas of what constitute healthy food are a bit different (I think fat is healthy), I think this blog will be a great resource and inspiration for me. I also love how accessible and family friendly Renee’s recipes are. I think I tend to only post about the really complicated stuff, which maybe isn’t so great.
As I was reading through Renee’s most recent recipes, I saw a lot that I wanted to try. I love that she has a lot of s’mores recipes, and especially that she made s’mores krispy treats – because I did the same thing! I also really liked the sound of this Almond Joy Poke Cake made with coconut oil, coconut oil is the best! She writes that she isn’t ashamed to use boxed cake mix as a shortcut, and I feel the same way! I don’t post about them much, but I love to make poke cakes or dress up cake mix in other ways (pro tip: use 1 extra egg, milk instead of water, melted butter instead of oil).
I’ve been baking way more than usual lately, though, and what jumped out at me the most was this Creamy Lemon and Fresh Basil Chicken Salad. It has been super hot and humid lately, so this is exactly the kind of thing I want to be eating right now. (more…)
