Tag: food

25 Recipes I Really Want to Make

25 Recipes I Really Want to Make

There are a ton of recipes I want to make, but I have a “One Day” section of a Pinterest board that has 25 recipes that I really want to make. Well, not really those specific recipes but they represent the food I want to make. Now, some of these recipes are difficult, but a lot are just recipes I can’t easily find the ingredients for, keep saying I want to make but don’t, or just haven’t found the right opportunity to make. The below list is in no particular order.

The Recipes:

  1. Red Lobster Cheddar Biscuits
    • Who doesn’t want to make these? They’re delicious.
  2. Gyro
    • I love gyros, and I already make a mean tzatziki sauce, so the next step is obviously making the actual meat. And the flat bread to go along with it.
  3. Mushroom Brie Fondue
    • I love fondue, and I think this specific type of fondue sounds amazing.
  4. Tortillas
    • We would save so much money if we made our own tortillas. We go through at least 20 a week.
  5. Russian Dressing
    • This type of dressing is weirdly hard to find, but I love it, so I want to have a backup plan.
  6. Peach Jalapeno Jam
    • I’ve never made jam before and would like to.
  7. Gochujang
  8. Kimchi
    • This and gochujang are really for Shane. He loves kimchi, and we get it homemade from a local Asian grocery store, but it’d be nice to make it ourselves sometimes. I’m just interested in fermenting the gochujang.
  9. Pretzels
    • The soft kind, that you can rip up and dip in cheddar beer sauce.
  10. Lobster Roll
    • Please take me back to Maine.
  11. Gravlax
    • This is something my parents used to make, and while I love gravlax themselves. there’s definitely a nostalgia factor in play.
  12. Jaegerschnitzel
    • This just looks tasty and I’m into it.
  13. Summer Rolls
    • I don’t like egg rolls, spring rolls are okay, but summer rolls are my jimmy-jam. They’re so refreshing.
  14. Fried Green Tomatoes
    • These are so delicious, so if I can find green tomatoes, I definitely want to try my hand at it.
  15. Vietnamese Noodle Salad
    • When we go get Vietnamese, Shane gets pho and I get a cold noodle salad. They’re so good, I’d like to have one in my rotation.
  16. Ravioli
  17. Gnocchi
    • Ravioli & gnocchi are 2 pastas we’ve never made and take the skill up a notch from what we normally make.
  18. Khachapuri
    • I didn’t even know this existed until early this year, but it’s my favorite food to get at a little place we like to go. I’d like to make it once, and then let them make it for me the rest of the time. It’s called “Georgian Cheese Bread” in case you’re wondering what it is.
  19. Beignets
    • Another one based solely on how tasty it is.
  20. Beef Wellington
    • This just seems like a good challenge. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had it.
  21. Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich
    • We didn’t get to try this when we were in Nashville last year, and I’d like to see if we can recreate them here. Though I guess we won’t know how they compare. Oh well.
  22. Hush Puppies
    • I didn’t know I loved these until last summer, and these are definitely another “want to learn how to make just so I can have them whenever I want them”.
  23. Crab Rangoon
    • My #1 comfort food definitely needs to be on rotation.
  24. Naan
    • I’m beginning to realize that most of this list isn’t about techniques, it’s about things I enjoy stuffing into my face.
  25. Seafood Chowder
    • I seriously miss Maine.

And that’s the (current) list, it’ll definitely be updated continually. One of the reasons we bought the house we did was the amazing kitchen and I’ve been really enjoying it. I can’t wait to explore some of these recipes.

My Favorite Pictures From June

There haven’t been many picture-taking opportunities in June because, you know, we haven’t gone anywhere. Actually, I should have taken pictures of our new grill. Maybe in July.

  1. Tau enjoys getting a belly rub on the concrete of the back porch.
  2. Tau explores the griddle we’ve been storing on the back porch.
  3. Tau views his domain.

4. The one place we’ve been since the pandemic started – a restaurant called Old Town Crepes. We’ve gone exactly once since all this started. We get the khachapuri (Georgian cheese and egg bread) every single time we do get to go. God, it’s delicious.
5. The note that came with the chocolate covered strawberries Shane sent me.
6. One of my all-time favorites, Tau is curled up with my stuffed animals on the bed. I sleep with either Ruff (the dog) or Buspar (the sock monkey) every night.

Remembering My Mom Through Food

I think about my mom a lot, sometimes I imagine the conversations we would have about whatever’s going on in my life. I’m lucky in that while memories hurt, I enjoy thinking about her. I still like to poke fun at her, to be honest.

A lot of memories associated with my mom center on food. Dinners growing up, holidays, special occasions – and the random gourmet level recipes she made with my brother. But even more than that there are specific dishes that are tied so tightly to her in my memory that even considering making them makes me feel closer to her.

She made a specific potato salad – one with Russian dressing – that wasn’t in the recipe box I got after her death. I found a close-enough version online and while it needs some tweaks, it immediately made me fall into a well of (happy) memories. “Brown Rice” aka stick of butter rice that would be fought over by everyone. It was the best side to another Mom memory – soy sauce marinaded flank steak with horseradish.

I’m realizing that the rest of these are pretty standard family holiday foods – mashed potatoes with “too much” garlic, green bean casserole, crescent rolls from a can, specific types of cookies, fudge, etc. The sight of a little dish with tiny gherkins and both green and black olives. There have to be both types of olives, it’s the law. Even the process of canning or making fresh pasta makes me think of my mom. I want to learn to can things because my mom did and I want to share that with her.

She also passed down an interest in grocery stores in other places. I think it comes from growing up/living in a small town – we had to drive 2 hours away to get a lot of the ingredients my mom and brother needed. Standing in a fancy grocery store buying things that my childhood home’s stores would have never carried is imprinted in my mind. And getting the mini coffee at Fresh Market feeling very grown up.

We went to New Orleans once, just the two of us, and we hit up the grocery stores as soon as we could. Regional differences in food and the way grocery store are made are a real thing. Shane has indulged my need to check out grocery stores in the cities we visit for years now.

There were so many long, loud dinners and those memories really carry me through some of my worst times.

Sorry if this is rambling and doesn’t make much sense. I just wanted to get this “down on paper”.

Sarah