It's All Because of Kym

A few times on her blog, Kym has talked about how she has a large cookbook collection, and decided that she was going to choose a book each month and cook one recipe from it each week. Her reports about successes and fails - plus just using the cookbooks - really inspired me. Plus it sounded like fun!

So I decided to give it a try, starting in April. And, much like the fitness project where I sucked in my niece Amanda and my friend Lisa, I sucked them into this as well, because it seemed like something they would enjoy. I know both of them have a LOT more cookbooks than I do, and they love to try new recipes, so why not use resources we already have? 

For my first attempts, I chose a book that Lisa had actually sent to me a while back:

I remember when I first received it, there was a recipe for Chunky Creamy Mushroom Soup that I'd wanted to try, but I never had enough mushrooms on hand when I'd think of it. So that was going to be my first recipe to make.

Now personally I don't feel strongly one way or another about Chrissy Teigen (apparently she is the singer John Legend's wife and a former supermodel?) - but apparently at some point she either had a cooking show, or was on a cooking show, and Lisa decided she was legit - hence the gift of her book. Having said that, in general, Lisa takes much more time and care on a daily basis cooking meals than I do. She is more than happy to spend the bulk of a day prepping and cooking, whereas I enjoy that level of things when I'm in the mood.

So - how was the Chunky Creamy Mushroom Soup? Well, I can tell you that the recipe was well-written, easy to prep and understand, and the resulting soup was absolutely delicious! We had it with a salad and some of The Tim's homemade olive and rosemary sourdough bread, and both of us absolutely devoured it. Needless to say, I used mushroom broth instead of the called-for chicken broth, but if anything, it gave the soup an even more robust flavor. This one will go into regular rotation, especially in cool/cold weather, when we love soups for dinner.

Next, I decided to try the Vegetable Tortilla Stew. I was amused when I read the intro to this recipe, because she says she wanted to include a recipe for her vegetarian friends, even though when making it she wanted to add chicken - but she kept it vegetarian. Except, she committed a classic non-vegetarian mistake - she used chicken broth! 😊

Anyway, this one required more prep and something new for me, but I was determined to try it (and I used vegetable broth, LOL). When I was tasting it while cooking, I thought it was nice and spicy, but I knew the true test was when The Tim tried it because he likes spicy at a whole 'nother level than I do. His verdict? "I don't even need to add a lot of hot sauce to this." I consider that a true sign of a successful dish! So that's another one that we'll have again.

And the "new" thing in this recipe? It has you make tortilla strips fried in oil. I am generally deathly afraid to do anything even close to deep-frying, because I have a fear of things going south quickly. But I decided to give this a try, because it wasn't deep-frying per se, rather frying the strips in more oil than I would ever generally use, and getting it to "fry" temperature, but since it was smaller scale, I figured I'd brave it. And the good news is that a) they were delicious, b) it worked just fine, and c) it wasn't nearly as scary as I was thinking it might be. 

Having told you all of that, I realized at the end of April that there were four weeks in the month, and I'd only remembered try the recipes in two of the weeks ... whoops! 

So far in May, I'm doing better (you know, with all of one week under my belt). Just as a teaser, here's the cookbook I chose for May:

I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, thanks Kym! This is such a fun challenge, and the three of us are really enjoying it. For anyone reading and thinking of giving it a shot, I'd say do it - it's really fun, and why not use a cookbook, even just occasionally, if you have one?