Week 5 - Review

Fritters with Sweet & Sour sauce
Vegetable Dim Sum
Chop Suey
Sweet and Sour Tofu
Cantonese Stir Fry

Well, after my last fun experience with frying things at home, I decided against making the fritters! I did make the Sweet and Sour Sauce, and I used it for my Dim Sum, which was so fun to make! I put them in a bamboo basket and steamed them in my wok!

These were really yummy. I told my kiddos they were Veggie Presents, but they weren't convinced. You could fill them with pretty much anything, which I will no doubt try in the future!

The Chop Suey was a surprising hit with them though! Bren said " I totally LOVE this Chinese Spaghetti!" Which is especially surprising, since he has never liked pasta!

The next two meals did not turn out as well. I kept adding ingredients to the Sweet &Sour Tofu, but it still didn't taste as good as Toi's!

The Cantonese Stirfry had five spice, it was a very different taste, I didn't really care for it.

Week Four - Review

This was a great week of cooking! There were a few recipes I plan on keeping!

The red Pepper soup was delicious! B ate it....he liked it, but he thought it was tomato soup. I would use this recipe again. This is the first time I've ever pureed all the ingredients, I usually make chunkier vegetable soups.

I also made Tomato and Olive Bruchetta. B doesn't like olives, but the kids and I enjoyed it. I usually make "pizza boats" on english muffins, but these had a few more steps and a lot more flavor! B did say that I should have toasted the muffins a bit more. I didn't take pics of these, but here's the soup ...

The next recipe was Mushroom Pizzas, but I learned the first week that Mushrooms are not popular in this family. So I adjusted the toppings. I made three different pizzas, and the kiddos helped too! They helped roll out the dough, and they put all the toppings on! I made one with a pesto sauce and zucchini, one with a  cream sauce, bell peppers, and olives, and one with marinara and Veggie Pepperonis! The kids really loved helping, and I can't believe how easy it was to make this pizza crust. We will definitely be making these again!

Next was calzones. These were good, but they needed more cheese and sauce inside, they turned out a bit dry. I ended up dipping mine in the last of the red pepper soup, and that made them much yummier!

Lastly was my gnocchi. No good. I couldn't get them to work, so I finally did a search for Batali's gnocchi to try to save the dough. The hot water/ice water worked a little better. I ended up sautéing a few of them in butter to see if they were worth saving, but I won't make this recipe again.