Happy sixth night of Hanukkah!
Ha ha. Ready for another giveaway? Let’s do this!
Today’s prize is a big honking box full of books.
Amanda: Help, I have too many books. But I have an assortment of new, unread romances and adjacent genres that I’d love to give away. This giveaway could have multiple winners as I have a ton of books from authors like Alyssa Cole, Beatriz Williams, Eloisa James, and Jenny Holiday.
Said box will have at least five books, but likely more. Pretty much, however many I can get on in there with some Tetris-ing.
Want to enter? Yay!
Just leave a comment and tell us what recipe you cooked most this year? Got a link? Let’s nosh!
Standard disclaimers apply: I am not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and ready to get your read on. If your box contains a Linus whisker, please consider yourself blessed by my furry monster. Or as I like to call him: my Stinky Cheese Man.
Comments will close 16 December 2020 at or near 12pm ET, and winner will be announced shortly afterward.
Good luck, Happy Hanukkah, and thank you for being part of Smart Bitches!
Winner update: I’ve picked three comments because I have a lot of books to give away.
Our winners are:
I’m fortunate that my husband does about 98% our cooking. The dish I made most this year was a Mexican layered casserole. It’s made with corn tortillas, black beans, and a tomato meat blend with chopped zucchini and bell peppers. My husband calls it Mexican lasagna.
And a happy Hanukkah to those celebrating.
It had to be the kids favorite: Tomato soup with dumplings. Just to get the idea this is the closest I could find for a recipe: https://eatiowa.tumblr.com/post/48718889114/hungarian-tomato-soup-with-nokedli
Made a lot of chicken soup with whatever I had on hand
Dump cake. The teens like smoothies so there is always fruit in the freezer. As the bags get nearly empty and pushed to the back, dump cake. As the apples fall, pick them up,steam them, dump cake. As Harry and David enable your sibs to send too many pears, peel and slice, add some blueberries, dump cake. Don’t feel like making pie for Thanksgiving? Get a can of pumpkin, some evaporated milk, etc., dump cake. Truly my go to and the teens will eat it.
I’ve always liked cooking/baking, so there hasn’t been too much of a change this year (in fact, the hardest part is that I’ve really cut down on my grocery store trips so I really need to plan in advance if I want to try a new recipe – no more last minute trips to the store this year to pick up just one or two ingredients!)
That being said, we’ve done a lot more spaghetti and meatballs this year because they’re easy to make from frozen beef.
I added cod cakes (New York Times recipe from Sam Sifton https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017976-cod-cakes) to my meal list. I make them whenever cod is on sale.
I have been making a lot of grilled cheese, nice and simple.
Curries, chili, soups
A slightly adapted version of Half Baked Harvest’s Crispy Chicken Tinga Taquitos. We just make the chipotle meat mix and serve in a bunch of different ways!
Minimalist Baker’s Red Pepper Pasta recipe
This year’s most-made recipe is probably homemade pizza. Making the crust has gotten easy with practice, and I love mixing and matching toppings and sauces!
I opened a restaurant this year so I’ve been cooking up a storm! Garlic Sherry Mushrooms, Bacalhau a bras and cookies are big ones though haha
As much as I like to cook, we’ve been doing a lot of takeout and frozen meals because we’re both working insane hours. When I do cook, it’s mostly been comfort food like grilled cheese and tomato soup!
I’ve made a lot of chocolate lava cake, the recipe I use is from a book
I hate to admit this, but we’ve had hamburgers a LOT this year. Easy, requires no effort or thought. I’ve zombied most of this year, so it’s been about the easiest thing to fix.
Pure comfort food (and learned from Mrs. Perry who, alas, passed away a month ago from old age, not COVID). A German pancake or oven pancake or Dutch baby, heard all these names for it. But an eggy pancake souffle-y one-pot dish that my 2 college kids & I love. Ironic that I baked so much since husband is allergic to eggs.
4 eggs, 1 cup milk, 1 cup flour, whisk. Pour into souffle dish you’ve heated in oven w 2 T butter until melted. Cook 20-25 minutes. (Add apple slices for a treat *needs more butter then)
This one: https://themodernproper.com/crockpot-vegetable-lasagna Except I don’t like the texture of cooked spinach, so I usually put in carrots and whatever else I feel like. Oh, and I often sub different kinds of mushrooms. It’s easy to play around with and can be more light and springy during warm months and more cozy during sweater weather.
We have had a lot of fish and tater tots!
I make this lovely miso-tahini sweet potato and broccoli bowl nearly every week! It’s the perfect combination of sweet and sharp and so easy.
https://smittenkitchen.com/2013/10/miso-sweet-potato-and-broccoli-bowl/
I freaking love this easy delicious one pot pasta recipe so much and often add other veggies or leftover chicken etc now to keep it interesting but still adore the simple original: https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/one-pot-pasta-with-spinach-tomatoes/
Chilaquiles- I make these almost every morning. Salsa verde, tortilla chips, cheese, fried eggs with chopped tomatoes and a bit of plain Greek yogurt. I have no idea if they’re authentic but they’re delicious and crave-worthy. Serve with iced coffee and a side of a romance novel for morning reading 🙂
The recipe I made most often this year is the Bakery Style Chocolate Chip cookies from Handle the Heat—an easy recipe to throw together when I need to replenish my stash of ready-to-make cookie dough in the freezer. 🙂 https://www.handletheheat.com/bakery-style-chocolate-chip-cookies/
It’s a tie between black beans and rice (from a recipe I found in Real Simple years ago) and the Pioneer Woman’s chickpea curry.
Hands down, dried beans, which are delicious and easy in a slow cooker (1 lb beans, 7 c. hot water, a chopped up onion, whatever else you like to add [bacon or Penzey’s Adobo blend are the two I do most, but mostly not the bacon now that I have a vegetarian around][). But also — and often as an accompaniment –I’ve made a lot of enchiladas, from taquitos (so easy! But Trader Joe’s has discontinued the taquitos, sob!), from zucchini, and more recently from leftover mashed potatoes. I’m capable of making my own sauce, but most of the time I don’t. So easy to serve with beans and salad.
This was my go to for when I had time to make something from scratch, so good and filling. It is a tofu pot pie with a super creamy cashew sauce that is amazing! https://healthyhappylife.com/creamy-cashew-tofu-pot-pie/
Vegan bahn mi, made with homemade baguettes (from the King Arthur flour recipe) and tofu. Weirdly specific craving but I’ve made them every time I could get good cilantro.
Mexican chocolate shortbread cookies — made them as self-care and to send to friends 🙂 yummm http://www.viktoriastable.com/mexican-chocolate-shortbread-cookies/
So my all time fav is this chocolate chip cookie recipe which is #1 perfect and #2 the thing I get asked for the most.
Three tips
#1 use slightly less flour
#2 leave the dough in the frigde overnight and it gets better
#3 mini reeses make better cookies
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/10813/best-chocolate-chip-cookies/
It’s a toss up between deer steaks (my husbands a big hunter) and baked potatoes, chicken taco bowls and sausage stir-fry for our house. They are all really quick and easy to toss together.
Sausage Stir-fry: large bag of frozen broccoli, cauliflower & carrots mixed with sliced sausage of your choice…we love jalapeno cheese sausage. We used to serve it over rice but prefer to just eat the veggies and sausage now.
Chicken taco bowls: mix together in skillet until hot; shredded chicken, black beans, corn, rotel, taco seasoning and serve over fritos or tortilla chips with choice of toppings like shredded cheese, sour cream, hot sauce.
I have an easy beef stew recipe that my family loves. It’s your basic stew meat,onion, garlic, potatoes, celery, and carrots, along with the base made from condensed tomato soup (equal parts water) and 1/2 to 1 cup red wine. Add basil and oregano to taste. Basically, depending on how many vegies you add, you add enough soup/water to make enough base. For two cans soup I add 1/2 cup wine, 3 cans- 3/4 cup wine, etc. Although, seriously, I pretty much throw a cup of wine in no matter what. Then drink a cup myself.
I think this is the only one we’ve made more than once! Besides our basic staples, of course. It definitely turned out better for us in the Slow Cooker though.
https://www.thechunkychef.com/copycat-30-minute-broccoli-cheese-soup/
But I love to bake, too, and my husband and I only made these copycat Take 5 bars once, but they were delicious! Planning to make more soon, a double batch this time (well, doubling everything except the caramel, that was a little thick).
https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a33313965/copycat-take-five-bars-recipe/
Sophia Loren’s Spaghetti al limone has become one of my favourites this year, along with miso-glazed turnips.
https://tastykitchen.com/recipes/main-courses/sophia-lorene28099s-spaghetti-al-limone/
https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/japanese-turnips-with-miso-354957
I am the pandemic stereotype. I taught myself how to bake multgrain Sourdough bread. I had a lot of failures. But, I have achieved delicious bread !
My most cooked recipe this year was chili roasted green beans. You take fresh Green beans, toss them with Parmesan cheese and chili pepper and then bake them for 15 minutes at 400.
Given the dumpster fire that is 2020, I made a LOT of matzo ball soup, my go to feel better jewish remedy. My secret is I use the Manischewitz soup box. 😉
Red pasta sauce made in my instapot. Probably 1x/week year round. Actual recipe though, that’s tougher. Smitten kitchen’s cabbage and sausage casserole every month in the winter. https://smittenkitchen.com/2016/01/cabbage-and-sausage-casserole/
And on a similar monthly rotation in winter, my Nana’s pea soup.
It’s either the Zuni Cafe bread salad (the late, great Judy Rodgers didn’t like sourdough in it, but I do, so…sorry!), Rose Levy Beranbaum’s browned butter chocolate chip cookies (though I prefer them with the butter a little less brown, the milk solids just tan and not coffee-colored), and (believe it or not) the chocolate-banana muffins from Jennifer Tyler Lee’s HALF THE SUGAR, ALL THE LOVE (I liquify the bananas with an immersion blender, use a slightly less bittersweet chocolate for the melted part, and use parchment liners because the batter sticks like hell to paper ones).
My son got interested in cooking, so I bought him a beginner’s cookbook from America’s Test Kitchen. We got addicted to their Black Bean Enchiladas and made them multiple times!
Pork chops with shallot pan gravy – I got the recipe from a meal subscription box and it quickly became a favorite. Definitely comfort food
Baking bread and making chicken noodle soup in my instant pot. It’s such a perfect combination.