Making a Deceptively Delicious Meal

I like how minimalist our pantry is with careful meal-planning and shopping list adherence. However, I don't like what this means when it's the end of the month (read: need to restock up on food staples) and the end of the week (read: I planned to plan and shop for weekend meals later).

Week 2 of the Home Cure required me to find a new recipe and cook a meal at home. As I mentioned in the Home Cure post, cooking meals at home is nothing new, but trying new recipes is new. I looked forward to trying a new recipe, but didn't muster enough energy to find the recipe much less get to the store for groceries to get us through the weekend. Procrastination pays off once again! (Pure sarcasm there.)

I remembered I recently bought a cookbook called Deceptively Delicious. It's something I happened to find browsing the library and happened to find a great condition copy for a few bucks at the community thrift store. All recipes hide some sort of vegetable puree to add nutritional value to the main course, without complaint from picky eaters. (Even if I'm the one cooking and aware of these "hidden" ingredients, this appeals to me as a picky eater.)

I looked through our bleak cupboards and fridge noting ingredients we had that might be useful. Then I went through the book to see if any of the recipes matched up with what we had. Somehow our odds and ends matched up to a couple recipes that worked into a meal!

First, twice baked potatoes. I've eaten and liked them, but never made them or seen how they are made. This felt like a bit of an adventure. The recipe turned out great! I cooked them in the microwave to save time, then baked at the end. Like a friend said, I guess I made "nuke n bake" potatoes rather than twice-baked. Will definitely be making these again.

 The meatballs were originally meant to be burgers. I vegetarian-ized the recipe and added mushroom soup. The carrots in the meatballs were a little overwhelming. I'll be trying this recipe again later this week, but I'll fry them as burgers and try cauliflower instead of carrots.

Overall this was a yummy (and healthy) meal. I was especially proud that a complete meal was made out of our hodge-podge of items... and no Ramen was involved!