What I Made This Week

Short week, but got my new recipes in.

Sunday Ham, salad and black bean soup from Smitten Kitchen (NR). I really liked this soup, the only thing I would do differently is puree more than 2 cups of the bean mixture. But, that's really a texture preference more than anything.
Monday World's best pasta salad + leftovers. I had planned on making Swedish meatballs. I was dreaming of them. But...when I got home, I found I didn't have the spice/seasoning packet like I thought I did. Note to self: check pantry before planning on a delicious meal you love.
Tuesday I'm going out of town for a few days, so I wanted a big enough meal that there would be leftovers. Chicken with balsamic and garlic, new potatoes, broccoli and salad. Jennifer reminded me of how good the chicken recipe is. Yum.

Baking
Well, this is one of those times where something sounds really tasty and just isn't. My new recipe was chocolate nugget bars from my Creme de Colorado cookbook. Essentially it seemed to boil down to a recipe for homemade Snickers bars.

They were just awful.

I partly blame how old the butterscotch chips were. I'd imagine they were at least three years old. And the cocktail peanuts instead of dry roasted ones (hey, it's what I had on hand). But more than that, this was the kind of recipe the called for the specificity of candy recipe. Where one wrong move like boiling something too long can ruin the whole shebang.

Which brings me to how very thankful I am that food blogs exist. I respect the overly analytical and detailed recipe notes of other home cooks. The does and don'ts documented by others who feel the need to share recipes and helpful notes. Just like I'm loathe to buy shoes or clothing online without a review, these days I'm just that much more skeptical of recipes in, wait for it, wait for it, cookbooks.