Deceptive and/or Delicious

I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to try some recipes from Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. I've tried several, so here are the results. I'll start with the successes.

Successes
Meatball Soup. I LOVED this recipe, and I'm even making it again tonight. I'll do a double batch to have some in the freezer. It was quite simple to make. I even did the sweet potatoes raw, as her notes said I could, since I had not made the sweet potato puree yet. The scientist liked this recipe and graced it with the praise, "It's Chef Boyardee done right." My meatball mixture was very wet, to the point that I wasn't sure if they would hold together. I used sandwich flat bread in the meatballs because that was the only bread I had. They turned out tasting very sandwich-flat-bready in flavor, but I liked it. Overall the recipe was a bit salty, so I will cut back on the salt in the future.

Macaroni and Cheese 2 (the one with the beans). The scientest especially loved this recipe.  I did put in the optional cauliflower puree, as I've always been a fan of cauliflower with mac and cheese.  I could definitely taste the bean flavor, but I like beans, so that was good.  I used canellini beans.  Very simple to make.

Buttered noodles (with squash puree). Miller wouldn't eat these because he could smell the difference and refused to even taste them.  I think if I had waited for them to cool a little bit longer, the smell might have been more subtle.  I thought they tasted fantastic, so I'm calling it a success.

Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I actually made these several months ago.  They had a strange texture, but were ok.  I actually pureed the beans and added peanut butter, but I can't remember how much.

Failures
Chicken Nuggets.  These failed because my nuggets started to burn on the outside but were still uncooked in the middle.  I was so discouraged I threw them all out and was quite upset at wasting so much chicken.

Homemade Ketchup.  I thought it tasted like plain tomato paste.  The scientist, who generally does not use ketchup, said he liked it.  The recipe confused me because it said to boil it and reduce, but it was so thick to start with, I didn't know how that could be accomplished without just burning all on the bottom of the pan.

Avocado Spread.  All I could taste was the yogurt and lime juice.  I've never understood adding lime or lemon to avocado.  Avocado tastes so good, why would you want to hide its flavor?  I made a whole batch of this, and was extremely disappointed to have wasted so much avocado, one of my top three all-time favorite foods.

I think that's all the recipes I tried.  I'm not sure how many more I'll be trying in the future.  One of the Burger recipes appealed to me, as well as the chocolate dessert recipes with avocado.  (too bad I'm all out of avocado puree.) I suppose I would have to admit that a 50% success rate is actually pretty good when it comes to trying out new recipes.  At least in my own experience, anyway.

On another note, my Book Club is coming over to my place tonight ... it was originally last week, but only one person showed up, so imagine how that made me feel.  We will be discussing The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

My picks for our next book (which will be voted on) are:

• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
• The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine

Which do you think we'll pick?  I'm hoping for the zombies ... I already read the other two!

Well, it's later now, so I can tell you:  they picked Wicked.