Recap: Goodfood #28

We’re back with last week’s Goodfood meal box. This one has one repeat in it. However, a lot of them looked so promising that we decided to give it a go. Just a note that if you follow this series specifically, we’ve dropped from biweekly to monthly subscriptions of the box. The main reason is that this box was always structured to be a balance for when we were busy with stuff and event coverage season is pretty much done for this year except for one more in November so we are getting back to finding cool recipes to work on. I’ll share some of those here whenever we try something new on our own.

Let’s check out how this Goodfood went!

Fresh Tagliatelle with Chicken & Sundried Tomatoes
Portobello Mushrooms & Baby Spinach

My husband loves to eat pasta. Honestly, I can get pretty picky about it. We have our definite fave recipes. Surprisingly, tagliatelle is never our first choice. My husband isn’t a big fan of the texture. He’s never been one to enjoy the thick noodle variety. As for myself, I actually quite like it but then stick to the more traditional normal stuff. Either way, I chose this recipe because it doesn’t have a cream sauce. Its so rare to find recipes, unless I make it up myself to not have that rose sauce or white creamy sauce. Lactose intolerance definitely doesn’t work with pasta so well so this recipe looked simple and delicious with all its ingredients. It lived pretty much up to its standards. Plus, I multitasked like a beast and even got the chicken perfectly cooked, which is super rare. I’m really not that great of a cook..more a baker at heart. The meal here works really well. Its nice and simple and everything blends so well together and has a decent amount of protein and veggies. Delicious stuff! My husband doesn’t admit it but he ate everything else but the noodles so I think it worked for him also but for us, we’ll probably go with some other type of pasta using the same recipe.

Braised Berbere Chicken
with Green Beans & Tangy Couscous

I’m not sure if you know what Berbere is but we sure didn’t. However, it apparently (if you didn’t already know), is a common Ethiopian spice blend. Its a tad spicy if you look at the spice combination. Matched up with the couscous which this time is made in water rather than just soaking in hot water in a bowl, it was such a difference in fluffiness. I liked it a lot more than usual. Plus, its more neutral flavor compliments well with the strong spices used on the chicken and there’s a decent amount of veggies to also make it a very tasty and balanced meal. This was pretty much our experiment new flavor of the box and it turned delicious.

Peanut Butter Dumplings
with Sesame Green Beans

Our repeat menu of the box! Actually its the third time, that I’ve gotten this recipe. It shows how much we love it. Especially since I’ve been having massive dumpling cravings of late. This was the first time my husband had to help out with this one. It turned out every bit as good as I remember it. I imagine you will see this one again whenever it pops up as a choice. Right now, its just waiting for that veggie banh mi that we love so much to come back.

Pork Katsu
with Sticky Rice, Yu Choy & Wafu Sauce

The final meal of the box is Pork Katsu. I’m kept think that we had done this recipe before but I think its because I had almost gotten it once before but change it last minute. Either way, props to the husband for stepping up and getting the pork katsu done on point. Its pretty much the replica of the recipe card except without the sauce, because I just keep forgetting to put it. Its a Wafu sauce that goes on top and it would work great with it. Calrose rice is what’s here so it has that sticky rice texture. We like yu choy quite a bit and the pork katsu turned out pretty good. Its a nice contrast to the heavy flavors in the rest of the box, particularly the Berbere chicken earlier so this ended off the week with something a little more subtle in taste was nice. As good as this was, I might not exactly choose it again unless for a filler when something else I have comes up and its a choice.

Overall, no doubt that the peanut butter dumplings were my faves. But I think the surprisingly good discovery was the Berbere Chicken which was delicious. However, on an everyday cooking idea recipe, the tagliatelle is definitely in for an easy pasta night idea except with something other pasta.

Recap: Goodfood #27

Welcome to the next recap of Goodfood for last week’s box! One repeat and a few that sounded pretty good. Bowls usually are surprisimg winners, burgers always have a nice twist and well, sometimes meatballs and couscous are the simple combo that we need.

Grilled Tofu Dragon Bowls
with multicolored carrots, snow peas & red rice

Tofu isn’t our cooking specialty so a lot of it is either at my mom’s or when we get a Goodfood box. My husband isn’t a huge fan of it either. We ended up getting this because we have loves past meals in bowls. Granted, usually it is something I have generally tried before and this one, I haven’t. However, the tofu and the red rice is super nice. The sauce here is amazing. My only issue was the raw veggies which I went ahead to cook because I had a part of it raw and honestly didn’t enjoy it at all. I’ve always liked my vegetables cooked so that is honestly a personal preference.

Chicken Yakitori
with roasted carrots, chinese broccoli & miso butter

The repeat here is this chicken yakitori which still remains as delicious as what I remember. On top of that, I always forget to do it for the Battle of Ingredients but the recipe calls for roasting chinese broccoli in the oven and the leaves turns out like making kale chips. It comes out some delicious flavors and its mostly seasons with salt and pepper which is all very awesome. Plus, Jasmine rice is my favorite variety of rice so everything here really justifies why I like this meal a lot and enjoy making it also.

Paprika-Garlic Chicken Sandwiches on Pretzel Buns
with horseradish mayonnaise & green salad

The husband took care of this meal and the next. Its been a crazy week for us so these meals had a lot of it just being myself eating it and him only tasting it. I’m not going to lie that I ended up skipping most of the salad because of the horseradish. They gave a warning of the spiciness of it and washing hands afterwards. Luckily, my husband put together only a little bit of horseradish so it worked really well without burning my mouth. The chicken spicing with the paprika and garlic is really delicious. I’m adding this recipe to my chicken burgers ideas whenever we ever think about it and want to change up from beef.

Pork Meatballs & Roasted Vegetables
with wild jungle peanuts & lemon balm couscous

Finally, we wrap up with the pork meatballs and roasted vegetables on couscous. I have to say that the entire meal here is pretty well balanced. The tomatoes add a more acidic taste as tomatoes usually do with their more sour flavor but it works to give a lot of balance with the other vegetables added in here. The highlight here is the wild jungle peanuts which are specially picked from some region (Amazon, maybe? I can’t remember…) but taste pretty much like a peanut. The couscous is my issue as I had to pick out  the lemon balm because it was just too much in it and was so strong. Other than that, this was a pretty decent meal. I just need to remember to cut the onions into smaller pieces so the meatballs don’t have such coarse onions, making it stand out a ton. However, the spices are quite delish.

Overall, this was a pretty decent box. I liked everything fairly well. There were some issues here and there that makes me say that I love it with the obvious exception of the Chicken Yakitori. One more box next week and then we made the decision to drop the meal boxes to monthly basis for a while so we clear up some of our frozen meats in the freezer and eat some garden veggies from our garden and my mom’s garden, which she’s been sharing with us.

Goodfood Recap #24

Back to back weeks going on. Sorry for the delay. We’ve actually been really behind in cooking in general but we finally did finish up this box.

Do note that due to various reasons, we are again decreasing the frequency of Goodfood boxes. With our schedule, its actually becoming more of an inconvenience plus, we just can’t seem to decide on some of the recipes so we altogether decided to let some weeks by. It all works for the better financially also since these boxes are convenient but as we all know, convenience usually comes at a price. And well, July and August have been quite taxing on the wallet so we have to make our necessary cuts.

Without further ado, lets check out last week’s box!

Salmon Burgers
with Remoulade, Red Cabbage Slaw & Roasted Potato Fries

My husband is a burger fan and we usually tend to try out the burger recipes. I can tell you that salmon burgers aren’t quite our cup of tea. We love salmon but as burgers and with this remoulade, it just wasn’t up our alley. The best part of all this was the roasted potato fries and well, you will see that its quite a frequent appearance in the meals we have been choosing. I’m sure salmon burgers are good for some people but a mix of factors here just didn’t work for us.

Spiced Chicken
with Bell Pepper & Cucumber Coucous Salad

You can’t go wrong with chicken. Over and over its been proved to be right. It has been a while since we’ve had a couscous meal so this was really fresh to have the bell pepper and the cucumber with the salad. The chicken spices were really good. Its a simple meal but very delicious.

Grilled Greek Chicken
with Prune & Cerignola Olive Sauce, Roasted Potatoes & Arugula-Almond Salad

When I first looked at this recipe, I was starting to worry about the prunes and olives and the taste that it would give. Surprisingly, it works really well. The potatoes were good, The chicken spices were simple and the prune and olive sauce worked so well with everything. My only issue is that it had arugula and I’m just not a big fan. Luckily, whatever was left over, my husband cooked the salad and paired it with another meal afterwards.

Pork-Lemongrass Skewers
with Crispy Rice & Bok Choy Salad

The highlight of this box for sure goes to these pork-lemongrass skewers. It caught my eye when I was choosing this as one of the recipes. All the cooking goes to my husband as I’ve been busy with Fantasia Festival so he’s been taking care of a lot of these things for me. Crispy rice has appeared a few times in recipes and they are really good. The skewers and pork lemongrass is really tasty and there’s ginger in there that subtly was setting my mouth on fire and I couldn’t pinpoint what it was. My husband cooked the salad instead of leaving it raw which I love because while I’m slowly getting back to eating raw vegetables, I do like it cooked.

Overall, a pretty decent box. There was some surprises like the prune and olive sauce for the chicken.
Some things delivered like the pork-lemongrass skewers but of course, there was also the disappointing salmon burger. 

Which meal caught your eye in this box?

Unboxing & Recap: Miss Fresh #6

Remember last Unboxing/Recap of Miss Fresh I said I had another box coming soon? Here it is!

Miss Fresh
(Week of November 29th)
Note: There is as usual 4 recipes but they forgot to include one of the recipe cards. Luckily, the recipe is available online.

GNOCCHIS WITH BRUSSEL SPROUTS
pine nuts, red onions and parmesan

Gnocchis with Brussel Sprouts (without cheese)

I’m going to admit that I’ve only ever had gnocchi maybe once before this time so I wasn’t exactly sure how to cook it and my version was the cheeseless version. My husband had the actual version with cheese sprinkled on top. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy with this recipe. I think the flavors were a bit complex or maybe I just didn’t make it correctly. However, my husband’s actual version tasted good so I think the cheese adds a nice balance to it. If I were to make this again, it might be without apples and more finely chopped onions. Other than that, the brussel sprouts and gnocchi itself was perfect, plus, pine nuts added a really nice touch to it.

The take away from this recipe other than making gnocchi is that brussel sprouts are fantastic made in the simplest way possible: over-roasted seasoned with salt and pepper.

CHICKEN BREAST WITH APRICOT SAUCE
served with Squash Couscous

Chicken Breast with Apricot Sauce

If you all know me well, you know that I love chicken. It is one of those things that determine why I could never be a vegetarian. I have to admit that I chose this box for having this apricot sauce recipe because I just wanted to learn how to make it. I don’t use couscous ever unless its in these boxes. This one uses a Israeli Couscous and actually, much to my surprise, the squash couscous had a bit of heat that matched well with the tarragon and apricot sauce on the chicken. This is really tasty! I love the recipe a lot.

Biggest takeaway from this one: Chicken breast covered in foil baked in oven helps retain a lot of tenderness in the meat. We have always struggled with chicken breast being too dry after its cooked, so this could be a good solution in the future.

SAUSAGE AND POTATO PAN ROAST
with Spinach and Tomatoes

Sausage and Potato Pan Roast

Both my husband and I deem this the favorite recipe in this Miss Fresh box. The sausage tasted great. Its a normal everyday meal but super easy to put together as its just putting everything into a pan, seasoning a little, very little preparation as well and pop into the oven. I love efficient recipes and I ended up actually making this one for lunch one day over the weekend and it was super great. Even better because my Saturdays are always busy running around taking care of stuff so making something that tastes good and is quick and easy is extra plus.

SWEDISH MEATBALLS
on Basmati Rice and Napa Salad

Swedish Meatballs

The highlight of the main reason of why I got this box was for Swedish Meatballs! Sometimes, it is the reason I head out to IKEA. I was hoping that it’d turn out as it should. To be honest, these ones didn’t taste great but I have a feeling it is my own fault. In these recipes, the biggest issues I have are when it explains the simmering and whatnot. I feel like its hard to judge how much sauce is there and the portions and time frames sometimes don’t work well for me. However, this recipe could be just because I chopped the onions a little too big and there was just too much. I’m not an onion fan to begin with and the only way I enjoy a dish is when the onion is chopped really fine but I’m not good with preparation in the kitchen. It is a work in progress. I honestly blame myself if this didn’t turn out as it should.

Overall…This box turned out okay. I mean, we had two really great recipes and two that were decent but could be better because I pinpointed where my flaws were and I honestly think it is my approach that needs to change than anything else. However, if the lovely team at Miss Fresh do read this. Please remember to triple check that all recipe cards are enclosed. I was cooking the chicken via my phone. Its a bit more hectic because my phone’s screen will shut off after a certain amount of time and I don’t have the best memory so I like to triple check before doing anything. Just a minor detail, you know, but improves the experience when it isn’t overlooked.