Goodfood Recap #37

It sure feels like a while since the last Goodfood recap. We’re back to monthly instalments of these. To be fair, we only get the ones that we think we have time to cook and also the meals work to our liking. This week has two repeats and two new ones so it’ll be interesting to see. However, we took this box mostly because it was the week after some crazy work schedule and just needed time to not think about groceries and the like.

Let’s check it out!

Seared Steaks
with Lemon-Oregano Potatoes & Roasted Zucchini

A word of the wise to fellow cooks, at least for myself, I’ve learned that any meal with zucchini (or other leafy vegetables) should be the first to go in regardless of when the meat expires. I’ve experienced too many times of bad zucchinis due to my not getting to it quick enough. With that said, its why the random time that steaks got put forward. This meal is actually pretty good. The roasted zucchini is nice and I’d definitely try to do that again. The potatoes were a nice blend. We don’t like eating seared anything and like this cooked completely so the husband, who is almost always responsible for cooking meat, made sure to have it well done. That’s our personal preference, of course.

Chicken Yakitori
with Roasted Carrots, Chinese Broccoli & Miso Butter

The first repeat meal is Chicken Yakitori. I’m going to say right now that starting from this meal, the husband took care of most of 90% of the cooking and I only helped with small prep work and stuff due to work and whatnot. His first attempt at Chicken Yakitori and it still tastes fantastic. I love all the elements of this meal from the sauce to the chicken and the spices and the miso butter on the roasted veggies. I would redo this one on the grill any day in the summer. Works well because its one I’ll consider for the next Battle which is coming up in just a few weeks.

Fried Eggplant Sabich
with Mango Chopped Salad & Red Cabbage

Every box has a meal that we just add in to try out and this time its the eggplant sabich. The husband isn’t a big fan of eggplant to start and I’m not a big fan of this type of eggplant but I’m hoping to find an eggplant recipe which I can like and eat more of because eggplant is a healthy addition to our diet. This is supposed to be put into the pita as a pouch sort of meal but the pitas turned out to be too crispy so we just put everything on top of it. I think the meal still works because its like pita chips with hummus and then the freshness of the mango chopped salad meshes well with the flavorful fried eggplant slices. This was definitely a pleasant surprise.

Pork Chops
with Honey-Glazed Cipollini Onions & Shaved Asparagus Salad

Last meal of the box is also a repeat, one that I was a bit more than lukewarm towards and the reason why it made it in. Under the helm of the husband, I actually think it tastes better than the first time. It could be the potatoes are seasoned really well and finally not burnt as it usually turned out for me when I put it in the oven. The sauce is done really well and I liked it so much that I ended up making some toast to eat the rest up. It all goes well with the pork chops.

That’s it for this Goodfood recap!

Goodfood Smoothie Recap

Goodfood launched their smoothies add-ons for the boxes a few weeks ago (maybe a month or so). For their current clients, they gave a little discount to have the incentive to give it a go. Of course, being the wanna-be health nuts that we are, we wanted to give a go out of curiosity mostly. I’m not sure the smoothie lifestyle is for me but it sure helps in getting in the fruits and veggies count as well as the hydration and milk count although we do use almond milk.

With that said, they launched with 6 flavors. It comes with the 12 smoothies pack so we decided to grab 2 of each flavor so that my husband and I could each try it out.

Let’s take a look at it.

I know I’m missing one but I took this afterwards and the Mean Greens cups both were broken in the process of transport so we had to make those quickly. With that said, it should have more organization and whatnot to keep the containers in an upright position or just a way that it doesn’t break so easily since it is put into an insulated box with dry ice. Other than that, the packaging with the cups and lids makes it very convenient and saves my own cups from having to wash and whatnot and it should all be recyclable or if you please, reused since its fairly sturdy.

For each of the smoothies though, I decided to just take the images from Goodfoods site since smoothies aren’t exactly the most appealing thing to look at. This is in the order that we tasted it. I have put aside that our blender is not at par to make smoothies but we will be hopefully hunting for some boxing day deals to get a ninja blender or something along those lines because we do want to start having more smoothies and such.

Let’s see what we thought.

Mean Green

Nothing like drinking a salad, right? That is pretty much what I thought about this one. It felt like I was drinking a salad. I prefer to eat my salads so this worked for its purpose and tasted exactly as I’d expected. Actually, I take that back because it smelled pretty acidic but when I drank it, it actually didn’t taste acidic, just very green, if you know what I mean. Which is a good thing. It was a pleasant surprise in a way. The husband however, wasn’t a big fan of this one.

Mango Goji

I’m a huge fan of mango and goji. This sounds like something really healthy and perfect. Somehow though, this one didn’t work too well for me and I blame it on papaya because I’ve always found it really heavy and sweet that it just doesn’t appeal to my taste buds. However, its not such a bad flavor just in shorter doses for myself. However, my husband did approve with this one.

Cocoa Mint Boost

I’m a big fan of mint chocolate flavored anything and think of this as something a lot more natural but with a similar taste profile to that. It works really well. I’m not such a big fan of the addition of the kale but everything else here works really well together.

Acai Bellini

Acai Bellini is definitely our favorite in the Goodfood smoothie selection. It has to do with the normalcy of it if we look at the ingredients but it tasted so delicious. It had such a great balance with fruity and fun. It is how I pictures smoothies would taste and it was absolutely fantastic. Both my husband and I are fans of this one.

Carrot Ginger

Carrot Ginger is really good also. We called this kind of like a carrot cake and gingerbread cookie all mixed together. Plus, it had these little details that taste so great. We are a big fan of this one. Probably our second favorite.

Pina Colada

And the unanimous choice of what didn’t work for us is this one. I think its the fact that wheatgrass and our blender didn’t go too well and it felt like I was eating grass. It was also the idea that it smelled like this beautiful rich coconut smell but the taste was kind of acidic and coconut which was this weird effect on my taste buds. The husband and I didn’t really like this one a lot. I’m sure for experienced smoothies, this might work but its just not for us.

That’s it for this Goodfood Smoothies recap!
This is a special recap segment.

Recap: Goodfood #19

Welcome back to another recap for Goodfood!

We’ve been ordering these boxes at quite regular intervals. Its nice to see that this time’s menu actually reflects quite a bit on the warmer weather and gives us a very nice summer vibe. These recipes are on the more time-consuming side though as they estimate approximately 40-45 minutes for each of these and we usually always surpass that time.

Let’s just get right into it.

Enchiladas Verdes with Zucchini, Rice & Fresh Tomatillo Salsa

I haven’t had enchiladas for pretty much as long as my lactose-intolerance relapsed back in 2008 or something. I still remembering loving them whenever we went to Mexican restaurants with my friends back in college. This one is a little different as its our vegetarian meal of the box. I don’t usually start with the vegetarian meal however, I was tight on time and this was the easier one to put together. It also had an ingredient that I’ve never used before: Tomatillo. A fun little one to put together. There is a decent amount of chopping but putting it together was quite fun. It yielded 6 enchiladas so we made them in two separate oven pans. Mine excluded all dairy products, which means no sour cream mix for the rice and not cotija cheese on top. My husbands had everything as it should be. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this recipe but it turned out to be quite tasty. Not too crazy about the tomatillo salsa but the wrap itself (which is what it is without the Mexican parts was really fresh and delicious.

Mojito Chicken with Crispy Rice & Chayote-Mango Salad

One of the more unique recipe ideas from Goodfood has to go to transforming mojito to clash with a chicken dish. I get the concept behind it but I wasn’t quite sold. It didn’t help that they gave a mango that was over-ripe for a crunchy salad texture. It was mushy and in the end, I actually put it aside from just eating by itself. At the same time, I’ve had a traumatizing chayote cutting experience last year so I had my husband do that part since apparently my hands (and it happens to a lot of people) react to the chayote when you cut it and it dried out my skin and I just start peeling so its best to use gloves when you cut them as precaution. And they suggested to not cook it, which I didn’t like the idea of seeing as my hands didn’t like it, imagine my mouth, right? So we ended up grilling it a little so changed the recipe up for ourselves. I like chayote when its done good and it was pretty good, the crispy rice had a good idea but not sure in execution it worked as well and the best part did go to the chicken itself as it got infused with various mojito-ish flavors and the spices worked well. A little disappointing but it had some good elements and cool ideas.

Miso Butter Pork with Red Rice & Yu Choy

And we present to you the highlight of the box and also my experiemental choice which turned out to have some really nice trick up their sleeves. Miso in anything usually is a really salty idea. So I went light on the salt and pepper in general for this one. If I remember correctly, the rice had garlic and then had mirin and sesame oil added to it afterwards which adds a lot of nice flavors to it. There was some cool marinated apples on the top also with mirin and vinegar and sesame oil (maybe). Which made everything very marinated and helps that the pork was only cooked with salt and pepper and not some special spice. The Miso Butter element was really just the sauce that was poured over it. I could definitely have lowered the salt a little bit more however, it still was really delicious. I only ever use mirin when I get these boxes and I’m not sure using sesame oil on rice is a good long-term eating habit plan but every once in a while, its a pretty nice touch.

BBQ Pork Burgers with Crispy Onions & Garlic-Butter Corn

Onto my husband’s time in the kitchen as he makes delicious burgers. He took over while I did gardening so I actually have no idea how any of this recipe works. I can tell you that this burger buns were better than the last one we had. The patty was also quite delicious. The garlic-butter corn was really good also. Crispy onions do add a nice little bite to the burger as well. This one was a pretty decent success. We don’t eat pork burgers a lot, mostly because I never think about ground pork but its a nice change from beef. Our second fave of the box for sure!

That’s it for this Goodfood recap!
Next one is the 20th recap and while I debated to stop doing it, I have so much fun sharing these cooking experiences.

Any of these recipes appeal to you?

Rhubarb Compote!

TGIF! We’re finally at the next weekend?

Last weekend I ran out of time so there was no time to bake AT ALL! However, my mom made it clear on Wednesday night that we had to get rid of ALL the rhubarb.  I went straight to search up something.  She seemed like she really wanted to make jam out of it.  I just worry about how sour it would turn out.

After some research and debate, I ended up with choosing to make Rhubarb Compote!

My first time doing compote and here’s how it turned out:

Rhubarb Compote cooled off and stored in a jar 🙂

Here is the link for the recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/336492/rhubarb-compote?search_key=rhubarb

I followed most of that recipe.  I did add a few little strawberries to the mixture.  For one, I was hoping that it would make it a little sweeter.  Second, I had some in the fridge and wanted to use them up 🙂

This is an extremely quick recipe.  The preparation work, especially cutting the rhubarb is the most time consuming.  Other than that, you pop in a large saucer and you stir while it simmers on reduced heat.  Extremely fast and easy! What more could I ask for, right?

My mom was the first to taste it and she put it on her toast as jam.  She said that it tasted good just a little sour.

Later on after dinner, I wanted to try it with a banana, cut into pieces 🙂

Banana topped with Rhubarb Compote

Then my mom came up with adding in some mango to it! I love mango so it was a keeper!

Add in some Mango! Yummy!

Healthy and delicious! It tasted fantastic! The mangoes were very sweet, banana was perfect (not too ripe and not too raw) then mix in the tart and a little sourish taste of the rhubarb compote and we’re in business! 🙂

I would eat with ice cream but I ran out.  It is also a good combination if that’s more your style!

My rhubarb is almost all used up! I believe the last batch will be done this weekend..then I continue with requests 🙂

Feel free to drop me some requests if you’d like and I’ll line them up to try one by one!!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!