A more personal approach

At a party the other night, a friend recommended taking a more personal approach to this blog.

If you are following this blog and saw my sad postings of recipes (as my friend says, "everyone can just pick up Katzen's books if they wanted the recipe") I do apologize, but I am new to this blogging thing...I mean besides our India blog which didn't take much effort as traveling presents one with a multitude of intriguing blog-worthy things to write about. (Please note that I tried to add a personal touch with brief commentary mixed in with the recipes)

Anyway, I don't think I could keep up with the blog if I were to sit down and write recipes in between my cooking adventure, so this change is all for the better I suppose...so thanks "anonymous friend" who gave me some good blogging advice. I am writing this posting as recipe #9 is cooking on the stove and I have only posted two things that I have cooked, so as you can see I am still enjoying my new-found passion for cooking with Katzen!

I am just going to list the last seven recipes and a few things I've learned so that I can feel caught-up and continue to cook some more tasty things.

Recipe #3...(I already listed two recipes)

Rugelach

This is a delicious dessert I prepared, as I had the sweet-tooth. I ended up taking some to share at a Buddhist dedication ceremony I was invited too. I did look it up on Wikipedia, as I was curious about the origin of a dessert with such a funny name. I actually remember having this before...I think out of a package from Trader Joes at some point. So, the dessert is actually a Jewish pastry made in the shape of a crescent after rolling a triangle of dough around filling. Katzen's recipe called for a filling of semi-sweet chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and nuts. They were a hit with the lovely Buddhist crowd and I enjoyed a batch at home as well :)

Recipe #4 (This one is actually from The Moosewood cookbook. I cooked this dish for my dad and step family after the Buddhist ceremony and this is the Katzen book they own)

Vegetable Almond Medley

This dish might be my favorite one yet! It was pleasantly light, tasty and satisfying. The almonds-made into a milk in a blender and then poured over the top acted as a cheesy-like texture and really pulled this casserole together and then the crunch of the bread crumbs and almond mixture on top made it crunchy and "stuffing"like...yum yum...who doesn't like stuffing? Even my little brothers liked it.

Recipe #5 (I made this for my friends birthday and I think it was a hit as by the end of the evening it was almost all gone)

Humble Vegetable Casserole

This called for Caraway Seeds and mushrooms but I didn't have either. It had eggs. pickles and paprika and reminded me of deviled eggs. It was tasty, but would have been better with the mushrooms. I have yet to use Caraway seeds. Katzen seems to like these seeds and I've skipped them too many times (I skipped them in this dish and Recipe # 6 the Dill pickle potatoes which I didn't like all that much and I'm wondering if the caraway seeds really would have made that much of a difference)

Recipe #7

Simple Tomato salad (I found this recipe online CLICK HERE TO SEE at Mollie Katzen online. My mother-in-law had given us tomatoes from her plants and I wanted to make something out of them before they went bad. This was a simple straight-forward dish and really brought out the flavor of the tomatoes)

Recipe #8

Carrot cake (My husband put in a request for carrot cake for his birthday. I found this recipe by searching for Mollie Katzen and carrot cake online...I guess she has a dessert book! The cake turned out pretty good but was more of a loaf or heavier sweet-bread. I also thought a carrot cake needed cream cheese frosting and she didn't have a recipe for frosting for this cake so I used her Orange-cream cheese frosting in the Enchanted Broccoli Forrest book that was supposed to go with the Carob Fudge Torte. Not really the type of carrot cake we were looking for, but good with coffee in the morning.)

Recipe #9...and my dinner tonight was:

Swedish Cabbage Soup

I finally used caraway seeds and I am glad I did! Those little seeds add a lot of flavor. The soup was very good, but tomorrow I will put yogurt on top like it suggested.

What I've learned so far...

#1 Most every recipe calls for onions and potatoes

#2 One of the recipes called for "a scant 2 cups water"...I called my lovely knowledgeable husband who told me that means to put a bit less than.