Recipe Review #12 - Iowa Girl Eats Edition

 Ok, these recipes have been sitting here far too long waiting for me to add more. About a year and a half ago I discovered the food blog Iowa Girl Eats. It started with me finding a couple of recipes that looked good. Then I spent a good hour plus just reading about Iowa and getting homesick. I have found myself going back for more and more recipes and finding little fault with them and mostly just loving everything. It has become one of my main sources for recipes. I often have to double them, but that's not too tricky. So, although this is my official recipe review based on Kristin's recipes, know that you will see many more in the future mixed with other sources.

I will just start with one that failed at my house, but don't be deterred, you might like it. I don't know how wide spread a "loose meat" sandwich is, but I had completely forgotten about them until I read this post. I don't think I even visited the restaurant. There's wasn't one in my town (incidentally, they have one in Utah now about 40 minutes from me). They were served at school though. I can't really remember eating them because I avoided any sort of beef dishes at school because they were so greasy. So, the original sandwiches are beef, but I thought I would try her turkey version. (She also has a beef version here.)

I made them. they were fine. No one loved them and no one wanted to eat them again. I don't know if making it with beef would have made them better. So, I'm not saying they were gross - you may want to try them. I'm just saying we thumbs-downed it. Now that I have started on a negative note, let's turn things around.

Excited to try another quinoa recipe and liking the rest of the ingredients, I tried out the Kiwi Mango Quinoa Salad.

  I liked it. I thought it was tasty. My family didn't like it. As, I'll probably say again on the blog, my family just doesn't seem to like quinoa, despite my best efforts. The Ginger-Lime vinaigrette that tops the salad is super good. I'm wondering if I try this with something that my family will eat like couscous or even acini di pepe if they would give it another try.

Baked Bowties was another good recipe and great for freezing. In fact I made it specifically as a freezer meal and never ended up taking pictures of it. It is similar to lasagna, but drier. I decided not to keep this one, but only because I'd rather just make my regular lasagna recipe that I love. This is super easy though.

I love good crockpot recipes. This Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken one passed the test at our house. Everyone loved it.

It feels good knowing that your dinner is virtually made by 10am. I did have to make rice, but we have a rice cooker (that I insisted I didn't want, but love now), so that only take about a minute to get prepped and then just wait for it to be done. I wish I had taken a picture of it when it was all done instead of a semi-creepy one of raw chicken floating in broth, etc.

I love summer foods. Even if the name for this next dish, Summer Pasta Skillet, didn't say "summer" in it, I think I'd easily fall for it based on the picture. And, I did.

My picture is not so pretty, but no matter - the food was still great.

 I have to remember that when making these dishes to substitute the sausage for something a little less spicy, or just mix the spicy with regular or sweet sausage so my kids are more okay eating it.

I'm bundling two recipes together here because I made them together. First up is the Grilled Chicken with Barley Corn Salad

 

 and The Best Fruit Dip Ever.

The barley salad looked like it would be great. I think barley adds great texture and flavor to dishes. In fact all of the ingredients were ideal. Sadly, I didn't love this one. My husband, on the other hand really liked it. He's always asking for more barley and this hit the spot for him.

You can't go wrong with fruit dip. This one was good. I'm so used to the strawberry flavored dips I usually have with fruit that I didn't completely warm up to the orangey flavor. It was tasty though and the kids certainly liked it.

Kristin really does a great job with creating a photo that makes your mouth water. Look how pretty this Chipotle-Mango BBQ Chicken Salad looks. 

And even if mine wasn't as pretty, it was really good. The heat was a bit too much for the kids. I think in the future we'll have to grill them some plain chicken and just have the spicy stuff for ourselves

Here we go with that "summer" word again enticing me. This time was meatless. Summer Veggie Pasta Skillet. 

We opted for shells when I made this (since that is all we had). Also, I live with a squash hater, so we went with zucchini (still a squash, I know) instead.

 I really liked this a lot. My husband liked it enough and I think for the kids the items might need to be separated more. I actually made this one a long time ago (like many of the recipes I post), but just looking at it again made me want to eat it this week. So, I just got the groceries needed to make it again!

Recipe Review #11

These three recipes should fulfill your breakfast, lunch and dinner needs.

Let me start with saying I don't love oatmeal. I am trying to like it more because I know it is good for me, so I thought that this recipe for Overnight Oatmeal from The Yummy Life looked like an interesting one to try.

She has several versions and I went for the Apple Cinnamon variety. I don't have chia seeds, but I do have flax, so I just added those instead. Also, I just used regular and not Greek yogurt.

You are probably wanting to know how it tasted. Well, It was cold oatmeal, so that was a bit weird, but I still sort of liked it. I have only made it that one time (and this was actually months ago), but have recently thought about making it again, perhaps trying other flavors.

I have found a few recipes from Our Best Bites that I like, including this Caribbean Salad. I'll admit that the picture just looked pretty too and that alone made me want to try it before even reading the recipe.

Mine is not as beautiful, but it was mighty tasty. Instead of black sesame seeds, we just used the regular ones that we had.

The recipes suggests craisins or dried cherries. I chose the cherries because they sounded like a better match. The salad was really good and now that I am staring at it, I think I might add it to my list of meals to make in April. (Again, this was made months ago, I just am now getting around to doing a write-up.)

I'm always excited when I find a crockpot recipe that works. This potato soup from Plain Chicken has easily become a favorite. You don't need a lot of ingredients and the soup really is so good.

Though the recipe calls for hash browns, I have used a variety of frozen potatoes, including tater tots. I'm actually planning of using regular potatoes the next time I make it. The soup turns out really creamy, but not too rich. The added toppings are a must in my opinion.

A trick I use for bacon, is that I bake the entire package it in the oven whenever I need it for a recipe. I resist the urge to just eat whatever I don't need and freeze it. This saves me time later. I freeze a lot of things and have been taking pictures a long the way. I know there are a lot of posts about freezing food lately (which I LOVE!), but would anyone be interested in my two cents on the matter?

Recipe Review #10

I promise I didn't make all these sweet things at once.

Who doesn't love monster cookies? This recipe from Recipe Girl looked like it had the best of all worlds - peanut butter, oats, chocolate chips, and M&M's.

 I have made this two times. The first time I tried a few batches the big size and then a few the small size. I liked how the smaller ones turned out better. The second time I made them I just made regular sized cookies (baked at 375 on light colored cookie sheets). The funny thing about these is that both times I have decided on the first day that I didn't like them that much. They are really rich and I even halved the chocolate chips and M&M's.

 The second and third day they seemed so much better. I'm not sure why this is unless I just got used to over-sugaring myself. I shared them in a group setting and everyone liked them. However, after some debate, I decided to not keep this recipe as a "go-to" cookie. The main reason is that the ingredients are pretty expensive compared to most other cookies. Anyway, you should try them, you might find it worth the cost.

I love truffles. I don't think there ever has been a chocolate treat I have liked more. When
I saw this "Easy Dark Chocolate Truffles" recipe I instantly repinned it and put it on my mental "to make" list.

The directions were written great and they truly were easy! I opted to use both the coatings she did and dip some too.

My truffles were not as pretty as hers. This is my good cocoa one.

This is my ugly one. (I only did 2 of these.)

My almond ones were a little prettier and my husband liked these the best.

I made the most of these ugly things. I added peppermint extract to my melted chocolate (it's dark, though it looks more like milk chocolate in this photo).

I'm not so great at dipping, so these were not quite as good as the others, but still very tasty. Plus there is something marvelous about a hard chocolate outside and a soft smooth inside.

 And not surprisingly, they were kid approved!

It's been quite awhNutella cookies. Nutella is good. Cookies are good. So, I thought when I saw this recipe from Tasty Kitchen that these would have to be great.

What was great was using up all of my Nutella. I decided I didn't want to buy it anymore and this was the perfect way to finish it off.

They were easy enough to make, but I didn't like them.

Once the first batch was out of the oven, I added chocolate chips to the rest to try to improve them,, which i did, but not by much. So, thumbs down on this recipe for us.

Recipe Review #9

 

If you've got a few extra cans of black beans around, I have two recipes I tried that I would suggest (well, one is a keeper, the other not loved all around). I also reviewed what I considered a dud (and sadly I made two of that one and froze the one we didn't eat right away, so we have to suffer through twice!)

This BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad by What's Gaby Cooking appealed to me because I like pretty much all the ingredients and have very few quinoa recipes. I'm guessing I'm going to never have many in my collection based on the votes of those I cook for.

 I liked it. My husband did NOT like it, one kids voted almost thumbs up and the other said it's medium. My 2.5 year old ate all of it, but slowly. So, basically, it doesn't make the cut. I think it's something I could probably make for lunch for the kids and me when we happen to have left over BBQ check, but otherwise, we're not making this again.

 (I made a few changes. I doubled all of it. Instead of just a cup of beans I used and entire 15 oz. can. I left the avocado out as a topping instead of mixing it in. My kids don't like them and they don't sit well in mixed up left overs. My cheese was Colby-jack and I also added a bit of red onions as a  topping.)

I was excited to see this variation of a enchilada on Pinterest from food.com. Jalapeno's Spinach Enchiladas were toted as being one of the most popular entrees on the menu at the Houston restaurant.
 Imagine my photo here because I guess I didn't take a picture of this one.
It looked promising: spinach, garlic, onions, cheese, spices I wouldn't usually put in enchiladas like nutmeg and it was all topped with a cream sauce full of cilantro. I'm sad to report that we were all disappointed. It was just too weird for us (and we love our Mexican food around here). NOT a keeper.

And while we're talking Mexican style food, let me tell you about the Tortilla and Black Bean Pie from Martha Stewart. I like black beans. I like to have a variety of dishes I can make with them, so I was drawn to this recipe. I thought my husband, who hates casserole type meals, would say to me "why not just make regular burritos?"

I was right! Ha ha. When he finished the first bite he admitted that is was good after all. And it was. For some reason I had two kids that didn't want to eat anything for dinner, so I only have one kid review which was positive. I also liked it. That being said, the amount of effort, but more so time that it took to make it, I would follow my husband's advice and just make burritos. So, the only reason I'm not keeping this one is because it just takes longer than a meal like this should (in my opinion).