Goodfood Recap #39

Welcome to the next Goodfood. Its been probably about a month. This is definitely back to a monthly basis at this point. This time’s picks are fairly summery in my opinion, at least getting into the more warm weather foods that we tend to learn towards. There are some repeats and some that feel like a little twist added to something we’ve done before.

Let’s check it out!

Shrimp Boil
with Summer Corn, Roasted Potatoes & Green Salad

As always, seafood meals kick off the Goodfood meals. This time, we start with our repeat meal. The last time we had this, I believe my husband made it so it was a new experience for myself. Other than the fact that I’d love to know how you break corn into 3 parts (my husband says the cleaver is how to do it) by hand, this meal was pretty good. The shrimp was nice and its pretty simple to put together. It has a few steps to it like boiling the corn and potato first before putting it in the oven with the shrimp. The sauce that they say to make with a butter base (which I replaced with margarine since we don’t have butter at home) was really delicious. The green salad also had a good oil-based dressing to it and was a refreshing side.

Glazed Korean Chicken Lettuce Cups
with Sticky Rice & Carrot Salad

My favorite meal of this meal kit goes to this recipe. I’m always a big fan of the Asian foods here. They usually are pretty decent. Its been a while since I’ve tried some lettuce cups and such although I did end up eating it all separately in the end. However, the chicken is really good although it takes some attention. At the same time, the carrot salad is a bit like preserved style so has this sour flavor to it but it matches really well to balance out the flavors here. Plus, the sticky rice is one of the fave parts of these meals whenever it appears since I don’t buy Calrose rice but I definitely should just to be able to eat more sticky rice, not to mention the sauce the blends in with it from the chicken is just delicious.

Curried Tofu
with Coconut Rice, Roasted Vegetables & Thai Basil Salsa Verde

Tofu meals are usually hit and miss for us however we keep trying them out because its a good source of meatless protein and its always nice to add a vegetarian option every once in a while when we get a chance. While I can’t say the tofu itself was anything great (I’m not a fan of the extra firm tofu), the curried sauce was pretty good. The roasted vegetables are also pretty good and the thai basil salsa verde was also surprisingly a good addition to add some different flavors to the meal.

Beef & Shiitake Burgers
with Miso Mayonnaise & Roasted Sweet Potato Wedges

Burger choices are normally for my husband because he likes trying now types of burgers. This menu feels familiar and yet also feels like a past one we have had but maybe with changes. I can’t quite remember right now. It was a pretty good one although, I have never had uncooked bok choy so was a bit skeptical and after this, learned that I prefer it cooked. It is somewhat of a messy burger so I ate it all separately. Everyrhing was alright except note to self, with miso based sauces, it already starts off quite salty.

Thats it for this Goodfood recap!
Any meals that peak your interest?

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 Recap #33

After an over-extended break from Goodfood, we finally got back to one of these boxes. It was a huge help to get back to cooking some Goodfood meals especially with some cool new recipes to try out. They all looked very delicious so I was excited to give all of these a go.

Let’s check it out!

Shrimp Ramen
with Quick-Pickled Ginger, Spinach & Mushrooms

Seafood meals are always the first to be done. Its been a while we’ve done anything with shrimp. Its winter and ramen is a great option as a nice cozy food to warm up. Another really great about both shrimp and ramen and spinach because these foods all cook very quick so its a nice efficient meal. The only thing here that needed a different pot was to make the pickled ginger which is also a fairly easy thing to do also. In terms of taste, the broth here is what stands out. The pickled ginger has always been the portion of these meals that I don’t quite care for. Everything else from the fresh ramen to all the flavors here is pretty good.

Polenta-Crusted Chicken Breasts
with Endive-Spinach Salad & Honey-Herb Dressing

I don’t normally make food thats heavy on the crusting and stuff. So, its a nice little change in pace to do this one. What really adds to this is that its actually pretty easy to put together. Plus for something with both the oven roasted and frying in pan, everything times together really well to do simultaneously and not feel too rushed. However, I didn’t actually try the salad on the side. It does look fresh and good, plus it uses endives which I’ve only ever cooked with once and still wondering how to incorporate it into other meals when possible.

Agedashi Tofu & Sweet Soy Dipping Sauce
Garlic-Furikake Green Beans, Daikon & Rice

I’ve only had Agedashi Tofu in restaurants. In my memory, it uses the softer tofu than the one used in this recipe. However, it is a fun little one to put together as well. On top of that, I’m a big fan of daikon but never know how to make it so this is a lovely way to do it especially since the seasoning in the rice as well also makes it mega delicious. I really liked this one a lot. Agedash Tofu’s magic is also in the sauce and this one is very similar to the Japanese restaurant around my area. Not my habit to cook a lot of Japanese food at home except with these boxes, however, its a nice change in pace from the normal. I’m probably going to make the rice, daikon and green beans outside of the box and make the fried tofu instead of the agedashi one though.

Spiced Pork Bowl
with Blistered Cherry Tomato & Pepita Salsa over Red & White Quinoa

The last meal we made was this bowl. We always love to make bowls because they are so convenient to put together. Credit goes to my husband for putting this together on the weekend when I had to go to work for some overtime and it turned out to be the star of the box for myself. The pork had delicious seasoning. The crunchiness of the lettuce and the acidity of the cherry tomatoes plus the quinoa blend all matched together so awesomely. I ended up eating both of the meals for dinner and lunch the next day. That is how good it is. Definitely one that I’m going to try to make on my own time.

Overall…this week was pretty good.
It had a lot of fun meals with all kinds of different spices and meats. 
Also, all the meals were within the 30 minutes cooking mark so efficiency also gets it some points.
My favorite goes to the Spiced Pork Bowl but everything was really good this time. 

Goodfood Recap #31

As we catch up with the last box from 2 weeks ago, this is the recap with the rather interesting recipes and one familiar one that had a slight twist added to it.

Let’s check it out!

Roasted Nantes Carrots & Broccoli
with Lentils & Spiced Tahini Vinaigrette

Usually we aren’t fans of lentils or such and this is a filler meal for this box that we thought that we would take a chance on since it had nantes carrots and broccoli and we like those veggies a lot, however, this one did turn out better than we expected. I have roasted carrots in the oven before but never broccoli and it turned out really good. These boxes may be convenient but I think what I love even more is how it teaches me new things that I haven’t tried before.

Sichuan Chicken Salad
with Chilled Soba Noodles, Cucumbers & Edamame

I can’t remember the last time I had soba before this meal. That is how long that was and it might even have been on a plane flying through Japan to go to China or Hong Kong or something like that. Sichuan chicken automatically means this dish packs in some heat. If I remember well, the spice pack for this was peppers and chili and so on. But the balance of the noodles and the chicken and the veggies balanced everything out quite well. It was pretty enjoyable to eat.

Vegetarian Spring Rolls Bowls
with Jade Rice & Crunchy Peanut Sauce

The one thing I learned when choosing meals is that when you some kind of bowl option, its usually easy and delicious. Vegetarian spring roll bowl was the kind of thing that had me curious plus I had no idea what jade rice was and was slightly curious. As I was making this, the 20 minutes time was increased solely because there was a lot of prep work like cutting a ton of veggies and mangoes and such, so I took much longer than that, but then everything other than the rice and roasted peanuts is eaten raw, so it makes up for other menus and their cooking times. However, consider this one a surprise. Jade rice was good. The balance in the bowl with the peanut sauce was really delicious and the freshness of all the veggies and mangoes balanced each other out. It gobbled it up in one sitting (which is rare as some of these meals, I split them in two.)

Chicken Breasts
with Delicata Squash & Carrots, Chermoula Spiced Yogurt

The reason I wanted this box was for the return of the chicken and delicata squash dish. Much to my surprise and slight disappointment, it felt that the menu did change. Now they have this yogurt dressing which we had to put on the side and then improvise so we just used the honey to drizzle over the dish. The chicken spice and a seemingly recent obsession of Goodfood is Berbere spices which is a really spicy blend. Luckily we drizzled honey on top or else it would have been worse in the spicy department. I get that the blend asks for the yogourt to probably soothe the heat but us lactose-intolerance folks can’t. Oh well… don’t get me wrong though. The meal itself other than the mouth on fire part is still really good. Delicata squash and nantes carrotd in the oven are awesome as always and the chicken is made so juicy and tender with the partially covered cooking method and such.

This wraps up this recap! Goodfood has added to its food with a smoothie menu and being a current client, they had a deal offer for the first one so we are going to give that a shot. However, my order was processed late so it missed the cutoff of this box, bumping it to the next one in December.

Goodfood Recap #23

It sure feels like a while since the last time I wrote a Goodfood recap. The only reason is that the recipes weren’t quite to our liking so we decided to just skip 2 weeks. Now its back generally to a schedule that we like. Without further ado, here’s the recap for last week’s meals!

Shrimp Boil
with Summer Corn, Roasted Potatoes and Green Salad

Sorry for the scattered look on this one. We kind of had this one in a scattered manner as well. This was a pretty summer themed meal and I loved the making the shrimps and corns and potatoes together. The spices were delicious. I didn’t get the salad but my husband did. I believe the dressing smelled pretty good.

Grilled Vegetable Bowls
with Ginger-Soy Sauce & Edamame Rice

I’m going to admit right now that last week was hell and we’ve had a whole lot of delays on cooking and just had a ton of leftovers and stuff. Its re-adapting to some things in life that has surfaced. It changed the routine I had and who knew that it would be delayed like this. When we got around to making the vegetable bowl, the zucchini was already done for, making this bowl slightly sad. However, the edamame rice was delicious. The veggies and the spices were really great as well. Its all very lovely along with the ginger-soy sauce also. Maybe we will remake this one day with the yellow zucchini.

Soy-Maple Chicken
with Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Grilled Zucchini & Charred Scallion Salad

The soy-maple sauce was quite tasty here. The oven-roasted sweet potatoes also had a great recipe. Simple and easy. I’m not much for scallion so I didn’t go and eat a whole scallion stalk. Well, surprisingly the zucchini here didn’t go bad so the grilling it turned out great. Of course, the grilled stuff is all my husband’s hard work. This meal does come together quite well.

Herbed Pork Chops
with Pistachio-Mint Salmuera, Grilled Peppers & Roasted Baby Potatoes

The last meal of this box is the herbed pork chops. The spices for the pork chop was absolutely delicious. I’m starting to see a theme in the spice blends and how good they are while all being quite different. My husband handled this meal. The potatoes turned out quite well. The grilled peppers was also quite good. Simple stuff is always the best method in my book. While I liked the idea of the pistachio=mint salmuera, I liked the pork chops without that topping.  I didn’t mind it much but the spices already had enough balance in flavor to make it all work. But then, I refer back to the simple things for myself that always work best that I mentioned before.

Overall…

It was a pretty decent box. Anything that didn’t go well was because of my procrastination. The spice blends in the meals were very good and gave these meals their own distinction. There are some simple elements here that worked very well too.

With that said, we have a new box this week and its already having its delays with all the events happening in town. 
I’ll be back with that recap next week!

Recap: Goodfood #5

We take a tiny break to share a little of the last Goodfood meal box!

This time was a pretty interesting mix. I honestly got it for one of the recipes and then had to take a chance on the other menus. A lot of times that is truly the fun part of these boxes to learn more about how to cook certain ingredients and take away the parts we like from it all. Do note that I couldn’t eat two of the meals and I really only realized that after the meals came and I took a closer look at the menus.

Let’s start!

Okonomiyaki with Edamame, Chinese Broccoli & Sriracha Mayo

First up is the recipe that I got this box for. Its the Okonomiyaki which is a Japanese pancake. It is filled with chopped cabbage. This meal was really good. I skipped on the sriracha mayo since I can’t take spicy foods too well but he also loved it a lot. The standout meal of the box right off the bat. I actually really love the sides of using edamame and chinese broccoli. Its a tasty mix for healthy sides.

Balsamic Glazed Pork with Rice Salad & Roasted Broccoli

We’re big fans of pork chops. For the most part, this meal was pretty good. The acidity of the dish was well-balanced. The roasted broccoli was pretty interesting since I’ve never made broccoli like that and particularly with those spices. The only part that turned out a tad funky was the rice salad and it really had to do with using figs. But that might be my fault because I’m horrible at cutting anything into fine and small pieces. The figs turned out to be just a tad odd for both our tastes. It felt like I had tossed in fig newtons and I like fig newtons, just not in my rice.

Stuffed Sweet Potatoes with Quinoa & Roasted Red Pepper-Tahini Dressing

The next two meals are the ones that I couldn’t eat.

Stuffed sweet potatoes looked really good and I could have done these without the sauce but I felt like it wouldn’t make much sense plus the sweet potatoes were so tiny and they weren’t doing too hot after sitting in the fridge for a few days. Its odd for it to go bad so quickly but I had to toss one of them out. I’ll talk about this issue that I’ve had with even the other box I ordered at the end. However, it was a pretty cool experience making the quinoa blend and especially the roasted pepper tahini dressing which could be useful for future recipes for my husband.

Pappardelle a la Bolognese with Parmesan Chips & Celery Salad

Excuse the messy presentation

Funny how being on vacation turns out to be the hardest time to actually sit down and make a meal. So this meal turned out to be an afterthought particularly in the photographing it part. However, my husband learned that he’s not a fan of pappardelle which I figured since he’s not a fan of thick pastas with the exception of lasagna. The parmesan chips turned out to be overcooked however, the husband said it was good (although I think he’s just being polite). We skipped on the celery but instead used it to make a shrimp and celery stir fry for me since I was pretty much left with nothing much to eat after discovering that the pasta seemed to have cheese all over it, although I’d have to research a little on pappardelle to know if it is but I wanted to be extra safe.

Overall…

This box was half and half. We loved the Okonomiyaki, liked the Glazed Pork, thought the sweet potatoes were decent but didn’t really like the pappardelle. We’ve definitely had better boxes but this one did really fulfill the whole foodie eating experience to learn to cook new things and try new flavors.

**Referring to the thought back in the sweet potatoes section, we’ve had issues with the previous box as to the order to best cook these menus. Obviously, we just stick the bags in the fridge and sometimes, the humidity in the fridge will cause certain veggies to go bad quicker than normal. However, if we split it up then we’re scared that we’ll lose and ingredient or something. Either way, it always baffles me how the companies don’t give a general idea of numbering their menus as to the order they should preferably be cooked to avoid any veggies losing their freshness or going bad. For the most part, its not a huge problem but sometimes, it could be and it sucks to lose out on ingredients especially when its just the fact of being one day later due to life happening. Maybe it sounds like a silly complaint and its great that they already put best before dates on their meat, which I like a lot, however, its how I feel.**

We are still loving Goodfood experience and already have our next box chosen and waiting for it next week. Its been busy so we’re particularly appreciative of having this option.