food – erniebufflo's south & west kitchen

November 8, 2023

Sweet Potato Casserole Goes Pie

Sweet potato casserole is a Southern Thanksgiving staple. My Memaw always made it– her version involved candied slices of sweet potato, topped with toasted pecans and marshmallows. I never liked it, because it was like a hunk of dessert on my otherwise savory plate of Thanksgiving goodness. And honestly toward the end she mostly burned the marshmallows, bless her heart. So I got to thinking: why not flip sweet potato casserole all the way into dessert? What about a sweet potato pie that contained all the elements of sweet potato casserole? I decided to work the pecans into a graham cracker crust, though in the future I might experiment with a crust that’s more like a pecan sandy cookie. And the marshmallows obviously needed to become the topping for the pie. I went with a marshmallow meringue because you can torch it to get that toasty marshmallow element, but for those of you daunted by meringue or lacking a torch or wanting a topping you can fully make ahead, I have also included the option of a marshmallow whip. My final suggestion? Enjoy it with a glass of nice whiskey.

Crust

1 c (4 oz) pecan halves or pieces

11 whole graham crackers, broken

4 t minced fresh ginger

2 T dark brown sugar

½ t kosher salt

½ t ground cinnamon

6 T unsalted butter, melted

Filling

3 lbs sweet potatoes

½ c heavy cream

½ c packed light brown sugar

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

2 T unsalted butter, melted

1 T pure vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

½ t salt

½ t cinnamon

½ t ground allspice

¼ t freshly grated nutmeg

Marshmallow Meringue

1 7-ounce jar Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Creme

3 large egg whites

⅛ t salt

¼ t cream of tartar

¼ c sugar

Alternative Marshmallow Whip Topping

1 c heavy cream

1 7 oz jar marshmallow fluff

½ t salt

Do ahead: Roast sweet potatoes until soft, for about an hour at 375 F. I did this the day before so my potatoes had time to cool and it made it super easy to halve them, peel off the skins, and make my filling.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F
Make crust. In a food processor, combine the pecans, graham crackers, ginger, brown sugar, salt and cinnamon; pulse until crumbs form. Add the butter and process until incorporated. Press the crumbs evenly into a 9- or 10-inch pie plate. Bake the crust for about 25 minutes, until lightly browned and fragrant. Let cool completely. Wipe out the processor.
Make the filling: combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth.
Pour filling into prepared crust, smooth top, and bake at 325 for 45-50 minutes
Allow pie to cool
Make meringue. Using a rubber spatula, scrape marshmallow creme into a large bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat egg whites and salt in another large bowl until foamy. Add sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, and beat until stiff and glossy peaks form. Add ½ cup beaten egg whites to marshmallow creme and stir with rubber spatula or spoon just until incorporated to lighten (marshmallow creme is very sticky and will be difficult to blend at first, but blending will become easier as remaining whites are folded in). Fold in remaining whites in two additions just until incorporated. Spread meringue over top of cold pie, mounding slightly in center and swirling with knife to create peaks. Torch meringue or brown in a 400 degree oven for about 4 minutes.
Alternatively: make marshmallow whip. Using an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat 1 cup heavy cream in a medium bowl until stiff peaks form, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to low and add one 7.5-oz. jar marshmallow creme and ½ tsp salt; beat until combined.

Pie can be made ahead, wrapped and refrigerated. Meringue is best made and applied to pie within 2 hours of serving, but if you can cram a cake dome in your fridge with all your other Thanksgiving stuff, you can make the whole pie ahead, cover with a cake dome, and refrigerate. Let pie stand at room temp for 30 minutes before serving. Whip can be made ahead and stored in refrigerator until time to serve–I would keep it separate until serving time, personally, just in case you decide the whip needs to be re-whipped a bit.

January 25, 2023

Cabbage, an endorsement

I come to you today with a simple recommendation:

Buy a cabbage.

a closeup image of a savoy cabbage, full of texture and shades of green, on a cutting board.

Cabbage! It’s in season! It’s cheap! It goes a really long way! Last week, intending to make Bon Appetit’s cabbage quiche from the latest issue, I purchased a cabbage. I used about a quarter of it to make the quiche, which was a lovely dinner paired with a side salad (I could not find radishes so I did not make the apple and radish salad that was included with the quiche recipe). Even my kids liked it– they can be picky but they will eat very nearly any vegetable in quiche form, which in our house is known as “egg veggie pie.” I buy frozen pie shells to keep around because leftovers can become quiches so easily.

Another night, I made Bon Appetit’s chipotle cauliflower tacos, and since we had some cabbage kicking around, I made a nice little slaw to go on top of them, with another quarter of the cabbage, some beet sauerkraut I had kicking around in the fridge, shredded carrots, and a lot of cilantro and lime. (I still have some of the slaw leftover, and I’m going to serve it on top of fried pork chop sandwiches tonight, I think.) It went really nicely with the smoky roasted cauliflower and the cilantro lime crema.

two tacos sit on a blue plate. They are composed of corn tortillas with guacamole, chipotle roasted cauliflower, a cabbage slaw, and topped with a cilantro lime crema.

Last night, I still had half a cabbage. AND, moreover, I also had a fresh batch of chicken stock* (always make homemade if you can, if you can’t, BETTER THAN BOUILLON, BABY) because I had purchased a rotisserie chicken to make a batch of chicken salad for our lunches for the week. And a person in possession of both cabbage and broth should obviously make Smitten Kitchen’s Cozy Cabbage and Farro soup. This one I was skeptical that my kids would eat. So I figured, I’ll enjoy it, they can decide to eat it or choose a leftover from the fridge, no big deal. It was ready when the pickiest kid came home from school, and she asked what’s for dinner. “It’s a cabbage and farro soup with the broth I made yesterday. You can try it if you want, and if you don’t like it, you can choose a different leftover.” She snagged a pinch of the shaved parm waiting to go on top of the soup and tried a bite. “I’ll have that,” she said. I fixed her a bowl with some grilled bread and a ton of parm, and readers, she ate the whole thing.

A bowl of cabbage and farro soup, topped with shaved parmesan, with two slices of grilled bread.

This singular cabbage’s transformation into at least three meals has inspired me to seek out more cabbage recipes to try soon. Here are a few that look promising:

Smitten Kitchen/Helen Rosner’s Roast Chicken with Schmaltzy Cabbage (then make stock with the carcass!)
Creamy Cabbage Soup with Gruyere (use the stock you made from the roasted chicken recipe)
Caramelized Cabbage and Walnut Pasta
Budget Bytes Cabbage and Kielbasa Skillet
Budget Bytes Crunchy Chicken Ramen Stir Fry
Budget Bytes Curried Cabbage (which I would probably serve with her yellow rice)
And for even more inspiration, here’s Mark Bittman with a dozen recipes for slawless cabbage. (I make the stir fried with pork and peanuts version a lot)

*Homemade chicken stock is the reason there is a rule that no one in my household can go to Costco without purchasing a rotisserie chicken. Homemade stock is vastly superior to anything available in a carton or can, and is more economical, too, if you think thrifty– I keep a gallon size bag in my freezer, in which I place onion tops, bottoms, and peels; carrot tops and peels; celery trimmings; mushroom stems; and chicken bones. When it is full, I make stock. My culinary instructors liked to talk about the “magical chicken” where you basically build the cost of the entire chicken into the first meal you make with it, and then you use the other parts to make other things and the carcass to make stock, and all of that stuff is basically FREE MONEY because you already made your money back on the chicken with the first meal. I think this way in my home kitchen as well– if we eat roast chicken for dinner the first night, I have gotten my money’s worth. I then pick the rest of the chicken clean and use the pickings for soup or chicken salad or enchiladas or something, and I use the carcass to make stock, and those things are FREE MONEY. Stock is easy to make on the stove, in a crock pot, or in an instant pot, and it takes very little labor beyond throwing it all in a pot, simmering it for hours (or overnight), then straining. Freeze it flat in bags, use Souper Cubes, or even reduce it down to a thick glace to take up less space and use like your very own homemade Better than Bouillon.

December 14, 2021

you can’t fail wearing argyle

I feel like I’m literally blowing dust and cobwebs off of this blog, as I haven’t posted in ages. My most recent post was in 2019, but I haven’t blogged regularly since 2018, but probably really since we moved to Denver in 2016.

But I’m back with a new reason for writing: I’m going to culinary school! If you happen to have been around for the first iteration of this blog, you might not be too surprised– some of the most popular posts used to be my weekly CSA boxes and what I’d do with all the produce inside them. I love food. I love to read about food, watch shows about food, plan trips around food, and make food. And now I get to spend the next 15 months getting really serious about food and cooking.

But before we start on that new path, I want to explain a little bit how I got here.

I graduated college in 2007 with a shiny BA in English and Political Science. I wasn’t immediately sure if I wanted to go on to grad school in English literature to pursue becoming a literature professor, or if I wanted to follow my poli-sci heart to law school. What *was* certain was I’d be following new husband Jon to Charleston, SC for his pediatrics residency. I got a job as an administrative assistant in a real estate firm. Yeah– I got my first post-college job IN REAL ESTATE. IN 2007. Remember what happened to the real estate market in 2008?

I found myself laid off in fall of 2008. Unemployed, I dedicated myself to volunteering for the Obama campaign, and by the time he was inaugurated, I was working as an administrative assistant in the Studio Art Department at the College of Charleston. I watched the inauguration with a crowd in Marion Square. The biggest perk of the college job was, I got to take one free class per semester. I immediately started taking classes in the English department master’s program. Stuff like “Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement” and “18th Century Women Writers.” I loved it. Reading tons of books, writing papers, talking about books, going to an 18th Century Studies conference (nerd alert!) were all extremely my jam.

And when our 3 years in Charleston were up and Jon matched for a Pediatric Emergency Medicine fellowship in Little Rock, I knew I wanted to go to grad school for English and pursue becoming a professor one day. And for the next two years, I went to the University of Central Arkansas and made all A’s and won writing awards and generally thought I was well on my way.

In my second year of the program, I got pregnant. And then that pregnancy turned out to be a twin pregnancy. And then that twin pregnancy turned out to be a very complicated twin pregnancy. I popped a Zofran and went off to school every day of the fall semester, my belly growing slowly to a point where I had to sit sideways in the desks in order to fit. I wisely took the spring semester off, knowing my babies would be born somewhere in March, most likely, and that bed rest was a strong possibility.

Because you can go read the whole story if you want to, I’m going to make a long story short and say I had a very traumatic post-childbirth near-death experience that involved my heart “catastrophically” failing due to a previously undiagnosed heart defect. And one of my babies is disabled and was also having a major neurosurgery and recovery in a hospital a mile away from the one where I was with the other twin.

And then I TRIED TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL THAT FALL.

Bless my heart, guys. I had a new chronic health issue, a major case of PTSD (though I didn’t know it at the time), AND NEWBORN TWINS, one of whom has a disability. And still I took my 5 month olds to daycare and tried to finish my degree. I finished all my coursework with straight A’s that fall, and kept the babies in daycare so I could study for my master’s comprehensive exam that spring. In my program, the comps had basically two sections, essays and “ID questions.” I knew I could rock the essays, but I was particularly nervous about the ID section, because I’ve never had a great memory for things like the dates things were written. It was basically going to be a trivia free-for-all based on a list of literally hundreds of great works of English literature. Example: they list a character’s name or a quotation and you have to identify the work, author, when it was written, and say something else you know about that work.

When I went to pick up my scores a few weeks later, I had, as expected, aced the essays. I can connect works to movements, compare and contrast them with other works, close-read, make thoughtful analysis, talk about meaning and symbolism, and make connections to other disciplines like psychology, religion, history and economics, no problem. But I failed the IDs. The kind of stuff anyone could Google.

I felt defeated, but told myself I was under a lot of pressure and just needed to study more and try again. I studied and studied and studied, and then I retook the ID portion of the test. I remember putting on a nice outfit to go pick up my scores for my second attempt. I remember sitting on the floor of a hallway, crying, when I found out I failed again.

That’s when a professor in another department found me, asked me what was wrong, and after a sob story about my failure, said to me, “But you can’t fail! You’re wearing argyle!”

Except I did. And at the time, I was so used to basing my self-worth on my academic performance that I was convinced that this was shameful. That I was A Failure. I could have petitioned and begged for a third chance at the ID part of the exam, but I was so ashamed and convinced that it was all my fault, and I had so little support in the department, that I decided not to bother.

It took me almost the entire intervening decade to realize that while yes, I did fail that part of the comps exam, I was also failed by that English Department. I was obviously a student in the midst of a family crisis– trying to parent twins, while married to someone in an academic medical fellowship (read, working like a dog), while learning to care for my disabled child, while learning to live with a disability myself, while dealing with untreated anxiety and PTSD. I even later realized that both PTSD and the specific medications I take for my heart defect can cause short-term memory issues, like, say, making a former quiz bowl team captain struggle to pass what is essentially a trivia exam. LITERALLY anyone should have suggested that perhaps I needed a leave of absence, and some help. I wish so hard that I had had any inkling back then that it was not actually all my fault, and that I wasn’t “a failure.”

Wanna know something ironic? The program doesn’t even have the ID section on the exam anymore. They removed it because it was “unfair” and, I suspect, because being able to regurgitate googleable facts isn’t actually nearly as important as the kind of knowledge measured by the essay questions.

So, I didn’t finish grad school, and I felt like a shameful failure. And I threw myself into being a stay-at-home parent to my girls. And now they’re about to be 10.

In that intervening decade, we’ve moved to Denver and put down some roots. Jon got his “dream job.” I finally got diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety disorder and PTSD and started getting treatment. The girls grew, and we did too. I no longer look at myself as a grad school failure, but a person who was failed by grad school during a very vulnerable time in my life. I wish I could go give that girl crying in the hallway a hug and let her know that she’s gonna be ok.

So here I am, a decade later. I recently mended a hole in that argyle cashmere and it occurred to me that I’ve done a lot of mending of myself in the last 10 years. I know myself a lot better and like myself a lot more than I did a decade ago. I don’t need good grades, or fancy degrees, or an impressive job to make me feel worthy. And it’s from this place of self-knowledge and worthiness that I’m ready to go back to school. This time for an associate’s degree, not a master’s. I’M GONNA BE A CHEF, Y’ALL. Follow along, will ya?

March 24, 2018

so what the heck have we been eating?

So, in my last post I mentioned that Whole 30 (ish) had inspired a radical change in our diet. Jon and I have both been researching why we’re feeling so good, and are pretty committed to eating a more paleo-ish diet, or as Dr. Mark Hyman described it, a “pegan” diet that takes the best of paleo and veganism and combines them. Lots of good protein, healthy fats, and veggies, with little sugar or grains.

Breakfasts pretty much always involve eggs. I learned the perfect hack for awesome scrambled eggs: crack eggs into blender, blend them until frothy, and bam, you’ve got perfect fluffy scrambled eggs. We’re also into fried eggs with sauteed greens or veggies plus a side of sugar-free bacon or some breakfast sausage. I’ve made breakfast casseroles full of veggies, and also omelets full of veggies. A particularly decadent topping for scrambled eggs? Crisped proscuitto! Sometimes we have hash browns, because we’ve been sort of using potatoes as a crutch to get away from grains, but we’d like to eat those less often, too.

Coffee-wise, we’ve discovered we love black coffee. I also made cashew milk for the first time, and have been loving it in coffee as well.

Lunches are almost always giant salads. Mine always involve arugula and maybe some romaine for crunch, or some “cruciferous crunch” mix from Trader Joe’s that has kale, shaved brussels sprouts, and radiccio. I throw in tomatoes or cucumbers or peppers, add avocado, and then some chicken breast, leftover steak, or canned salmon or tuna. Usually I put almonds or pumpkin seeds on too. Dressings are usually homemade vinaigrettes. I truly love salads with lots of vinegary dressing, and don’t really see myself getting tired of them anytime soon. This is also basically what I did for lunch before all our big changes. Leafy, crunchy, bitter, salty things are my fave. If I don’t have a salad, I warm up some leftovers.

Kid lunch note: I still pack sandwiches on Dave’s Killer Bread. Sometimes they get chicken noodle soup in thermoses. We’re not making the kids be completely grain free.

Snacks! I’ve discovered I like a simple smoothie made of frozen berries, kale, coconut milk, almond milk, flax seeds, and almond butter. Berries are super good for you, and I don’t eat them (or fruit really) very often. We’re also into beef sticks, these little fruit and nut rounds from Trader Joe’s that are either just apricots and cashews or dates/cashews/cacao. Homemade kale chips are a fave, but I will eat an entire massive bag of kale turned into kale chips in one sitting. Jon loves to snack on plain nuts. My late night love is just a giant bowl of arugula with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and I’m also obsessed with pickles and olives. We’ve also been going through honeycrisp apples, with or without almond or cashew butter, like whoa. Guacamole with plantain chips or gluten free tortilla chips is a forever fave.

Dinners! Here I’ll share some recipes we’ve really liked. I must say, the kiddos have really enjoyed this change and have been eating more dinner than they usually do. Very rarely I make them a side of rice or pasta to round out their meals. Below are embedded pins from Pinterest, so if you don’t see them in your RSS reader, click through.

There’s a zillion more recipes if you click through to that “What the Heck Should I Eat” pinboard. Any questions?

March 16, 2018March 16, 2018

I can see now why people get so evangelical about diets

Newsflash: Instagram is Filtered | The Adventures of Ernie Bufflo

Back in January, I was crying in my doctor’s office. I’ve been exhausted for the past 6 years. At first, I thought it was called “having baby twins” and expected things would get better as they started sleeping better. But they’re turning 6 this month, and they’ve been sleeping great for actual years, and I was still falling-down-exhausted all of the time. This was something I felt great guilt and shame about. I took multiple-hour naps most days while getting 8-10 hours of sleep per night and I still felt exhausted all of the time. I had no energy to do anything beyond basically existing, and I felt like a lazy slob. I had also figured out by then that this wasn’t about having twins, but about the hardcore medicines I have to stay on because my heart failed that one time and we found out I have a congenital defect.

As I cried to my doctor, she wondered briefly if I had sleep apnea or thyroid problems (no and no, it turns out), but concluded that yeah, feeling the way I felt was pretty normal with the doses of medication I was on. This didn’t make me feel better, because I’m never allowed to stop taking this stuff. I am on it forever, because I like the whole “having a heartbeat thing.” When I pictured years and years of the future feeling that way, I just felt depressed and hopeless.

Jon and I like to try different diets around Lent, not always as a Lenten discipline, but because it’s a good time for us to make those sort of changes, and having a finite time period works well for us. I have, like you, a zillion friends who are rather…enthusiastic about the Whole 30 program. I have argued with them about it, even. Expressed my disinterest in ever trying it. Freaked out because I read that article about the woman who did Whole 30 and lost her ability to eat dairy, my favorite food and one of my great joys in life, no exaggeration.

I did not read the book, or anything, but I actually suggested to Jon that we try it…. for him. He has some gut/digestive issues and is lactose intolerant, and we thought maybe trying an elimination-type diet might help us figure out something to make him feel better. We decided to try it for Lent, making it more of a Whole 40. We also decided not to be super rigid about it, me especially– I didn’t want to lose my ability to eat cheese, and wasn’t super keen on giving up dairy, grains, sugar AND booze, so I decided to let myself have wine on the weekends and some cheese here and there. (Yes, I know, Whole 30 purists would love to start yelling at me about how it’s not really Whole 30, then, and frankly I do not give a flying flip.)

We’re now past the 30 day mark and I really might keep going forever. Really.

First, I would like to pause and say that I truly believe every body is different and that I think different bodies need different things and may find optimal wellness on very different eating plans. What works for me may not work for you. Maybe you feel your best as a vegan or whatever, and I totally absolutely support you in that. There is no single right way to eat for every single body and I am only sharing what works for me. Also: I am not into dieting for weight loss, and I’m not into fat-shaming or food-shaming. Eating is a great source of joy for me. I think food is a gift. “Taste and see that the Lord is Good” is literally my favorite Bible verse. Rigidity annoys me. Making something forbidden or bad always makes me want to do it more. Rules are made to be broken Moderation in all things. ETC. Just so we’re clear.

Anyway, we decided to try this thing. And at first it was annoying and we felt like we were starving all the time and wondered if we were going to make it. I may have suggested to a friend that I was contemplating holding up a McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin (another of my great joys in life). A glass of bourbon in the evenings sounded REALLY GOOD to me most of the time. I spent one week entirely too caffeinated because I discovered that I actually really love black coffee, and it was entirely too easy to just keep topping off my cup to keep it warm without having to tweak cream and sugar ratios.

But after I stopped drinking too much coffee and feeling very Jessie Spano SO EXCITED AND SO SCARED, one day Jon pointed something out: I hadn’t been napping in many days. And I was like, “Yeah, and you know what? I feel amazing. I have the energy to do more than just exist.” I STARTED TAKING AFTERNOON WALKS. I do not wake up tired, and I also do not wake up feeling stiff or sore. When Jon suggested taking the girls to a Mexican Circus he discovered on Groupon, my first thought wasn’t “how will I find the energy to do that” but “sounds interesting and fun!”

I have so much energy now that I actually feel something like my old pre-heart-failure self. The girl who was known for being a little bit hyper, if anything. The girl who often practically bounced through life. A way I haven’t felt in 6 or 7 years, to be honest, because twin pregnancy was also mostly just a year of napping for me (makes sense, my defective heart was struggling to keep us all alive). I am also taking less anxiety medication because this all happened around the time that something got screwed up with my prescription that led to me taking a lower dose. I feel so much better than I was feeling before that I actually get choked up talking about it.

So now I’m trying to figure out what it is about all these changes have made me feel so much better. Before this experiment, we were mostly vegetarian, and our meals involved a lot of beans, vegetables, and whole grains, plus seafood, dairy, and once-a-week meat. I read Food: What the Heck Should I Eat by Dr. Mark Hyman, founder of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, a guy who literally treats people like me who have chronic illnesses by using food as medicine. After reading the book, I definitely think that my body (my body! not necessarily yours!) needed a LOT more protein and (good) fat than I was eating before. I think drastically reducing sugar and grains, which my body thinks of as basically sugar, as well as not drinking (sugar and grains!) nearly as much as I was, have contributed to my improved energy levels.

So, now I’m going to start experimenting, keeping the main framework of the diet the same as it has been. I want to add legumes back in. I want to try eating a little brown rice, or other grains like farro, quinoa, and barley. I might gingerly add in some gluten. I’m going to keep my drinking drastically lower than it has been. I’m going to keep up on the protein and fat. And I’ll let you know how it goes!

I promise not to become a missionary for my new way of eating. This is all just about MY body, after all. But this change has been so revolutionary for me that I just had to write about it. And I might keep writing about it too.

September 9, 2016

we tried hello fresh and blue apron. the winner is?

I mentioned a while back that we were considering trying some meal delivery services so Jon could cook dinner once a week or so. He’s a good cook, but busy ER docs don’t have a ton of time to research recipes, grocery shop, and prep. Services that send all the ingredients and recipe all ready to go sounded really ideal. I got a Hello Fresh coupon included in a box of stuff I ordered from Zulily, and a friend sent me a code for a free box of Blue Apron, so we decided to give them each a shot and see which one we preferred. I should note that this is not a sponsored post– Zulily frequently includes coupons and samples when they ship orders, and both services let users send friends discounts and free meals to try the services.

Hello Fresh

Hello Fresh was up first. One thing I didn’t like right off the bat was there was no plan that fit our diet preferences perfectly. We’re mostly vegetarian, but not entirely– we eat meat about once a week, and also enjoy eating seafood. Hello Fresh offers a Classic Box, a Veggie Box, and a Family Box. My ideal box would have a pescatarian option to get vegetarian and seafood recipes, but that’s not an option. So we did one week with a Family Box and one week with a Veggie Box. With a Veggie Box, you HAVE to get 3 meals per week, but the Family Box lets you choose 2 or 3 meals a week.

Things we liked about Hello Fresh:

The recipes were delicious, easy to execute, and full of variety. Out of six meals, there was only one dish I didn’t care for, a portobello and orechiette primavera that kind of had a muddy flavor to this not-exactly-a-mushroom lover (I don’t hate them, but I don’t love them either).
The organization of the boxes. Each meal’s ingredients, minus meat or seafood, comes in its own individual box within the shipping box. It’s super easy to just stash the meal boxes in the fridge, and pull one out at mealtime. This prevents having to hunt for the various ingredients and gather them together. You just pull out the box and get cooking.
Jamie Oliver contributes some of the recipes. One of his recipes, a Brazillian black bean and rice bowl, was one of my favorites out of the six meals we tried.
All of the meals were balanced, healthy, fresh, and about 550-800 calories per plate. Every meal was enough for our family of 4, plus leftovers.
They sent us locally-raised meat!

Things we didn’t like about Hello Fresh:

Lack of a great option for our family’s diet, which is somewhere in between Veggie Box and Family Box. The Family Box was too meat-heavy for us, and we’d like to get vegetarian and seafood recipes.
Lack of a 2-meals-per-week option on the Veggie Box. I am a proficient cook, read a lot of food blogs and cookbooks, and enjoy cooking. I would prefer to just get 2 meals per week, one for Jon to cook, and one for me to cook, and leave me to my own devices the rest of the week.
Most of the recipes seemed to dirty a lot more dishes than our average meals. Multiple pans and bowls were often required, which makes cleanup a bummer.
Most meals take longer to cook than the estimated time.

Overall, our experience with Hello Fresh was super positive, and we enjoyed the meals we got from them.

Blue Apron

Next we tried Blue Apron. Blue Apron offers 2 basic plans, the Two Person Plan and the Family Plan. With each plan, you can choose 2 or 4 meals per week. Pricing is the same as Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh’s Family Box meals are $8.75 per serving, Blue Apron’s are $8.74. Also: we had leftovers with both services, lowering the actual price per serving further. One major perk to both of Blue Apron’s plans is the ability to choose your actual meals from a set of options. Another perk is the ability to input dietary preferences. I was able to select no beef, pork, or lamb, so our default options are vegetarian, seafood, or poultry, and I am able to further choose from among a few of those options for the 2 we are delivered. This way, we’ve managed to get entirely vegetarian or seafood meals, with no poultry.

If I were basing my opinion solely on the first meal we cooked from Blue Apron, it would have been a total failure. We were sent a Teriyaki-Glazed Salmon with Brown Rice, Bell Pepper, and Cucumber. How was it? I don’t know, because we ended up getting fast food after a failure. To start with, a small bottle of sesame oil had leaked all over our box, and I was missing the bell pepper somehow. Then, they expected me to somehow cook brown rice on the stovetop in 30 minutes. After that allotted time, the rice was still crunchy and I was wishing I had thrown it into my Instant Pot instead of dutifully following the recipe. Finally, I was cooking the salmon in a skillet at medium-high heat as directed, added the teriyaki sauce as directed, and immediately the sauce smoked up to the point that my smoke alarm went off. And that’s when we decided to give up on that meal. I emailed customer service about the leaky sesame oil and missing pepper, and they gave me $10 off my next box to make up for it.

All of the other 5 meals we tried, however, went off without a hitch, so I’m ready to call our first meal-fail a fluke.

Things we liked about Blue Apron:

Customization of the plans to suit our family’s diet, as well as to choose recipes from among several choices each week.
The option of 2 meals per week on every plan.
The meals were all delicious, and with one exception, easy to execute.
The meals were all balanced and healthy, mostly in the 500-600 calories per serving range, with one pizza night in the 800 calories per serving range.
Every meal was enough food for all four of us with some leftovers.
Jon and I enjoyed cooking some of the meals together, which was really fun.
All of the seafood they send is certified sustainable by Seafood Watch.
Responsive customer service when we had an issue.

Things we didn’t like about Blue Apron:

One meal was a total failure, though I’m willing to call it a fluke.
The packaging is slightly less convenient than Hello Fresh’s system– you have to hunt for all the ingredients that you’ve put away and gather them together to cook instead of just pulling one box out of the fridge.
Most of the time the meals take slightly longer to cook than estimated.

You may be able to guess that Blue Apron was the winner for our family, and we are continuing with their service. It just suits our individual needs the best. However, if you don’t have specific dietary needs, I don’t think you could go wrong with Hello Fresh, either.

Have you tried a meal delivery service, or are you interested in trying one? Is there another one you love that you think I might like better?

March 21, 2016

menu planning monday

Well, after last week’s big announcement about our upcoming move to Denver, we have worked our butts off to spruce up our house and it is officially on the market! So far we’ve had five showings in two days, so we’re hoping things go smoothly. If you know anyone looking for a great house in one of Little Rock’s cutest neighborhoods, let us know!

Also last week, I made one of our favorite dishes that I first fell in love with on our 5th anniversary trip to Costa Rica, gallo pinto, and I must say it was totally worth ordering Salsa Lizano on the internet, because it totally scratched my pura vida itch.

Also last week, I had a rare dinner flop. The Tandoori Quinoa. I think it turned out fine, I just didn’t like it. I admit I pitched the leftovers because I couldn’t face eating it again. It’s ok to have a cooking flop once in a while– comes with the territory if you’re trying new things.

It’s also nice to diverge from the meal plan once in a while. I had planned on tuna cakes with sides of grits and zucchini, but we ended up having salmon with baked potatoes and zucchini instead, because I had some potatoes I needed to use:

This was supposed to be tuna cakes, grits, and zucchini. Instead it became salmon filets, baked potatoes and zucchini. The tuna will keep in the pantry for another day.

As far as what we’ll be eating this week, here’s what we have planned:

We haven’t had a pizza night in a while, and this one from Annie’s Eats looks particularly veggieriffic:

I have sweet potatoes and tortillas chilling in the pantry, and 3/4 of us are obsessed with fried eggs, so these sweet potato huevos rancheros sound amazing:

I love a one-pot pasta meal, so this one-pot zucchini mushroom pasta sounds great:

My one upgrade to these spinach and bean burritos is to grill them in my panini pan:

And for a seafood meal, this lemony shrimp and couscous sounds good (and is a recipe from the binder of recipes I made for Jon):

What’s cooking with you lately? Got any Easter treats planned? I’m going to be making these little nests for my girls:

March 14, 2016March 14, 2016

menu planning monday

Meal Planning Monday | The Adventures of Ernie Bufflo

I promise eventually my life will slow down enough (more on that eventually) to do more than post menu plans, but today is not that day. We spent the week getting our den ready for new carpet to be installed (thanks, tax refund!), and spring cleaning in general, so not many deep thoughts were thought, which isn’t very conducive to writing. Even when I’m not writing, though, we gotta eat. Thus, Menu Planning Monday.

While spring cleaning, I found under our guest bed four giant binders of recipes I had torn out of magazines in the pre-Pinterest era. Now that my husband wants to get into cooking, I realized the hardest part for him will be deciding what to cook. He’s not a Pinterest-er, and he doesn’t read food blogs or peruse cookbooks. When I found those binders, though, I realized I could basically make him/us an analog Pinterest binder of vegetarian and seafood recipes that take less than 30 minutes. And since most of the recipes were from my old Real Simple and Rachael Ray subscriptions, they’re all pretty fast/healthy/easy, too. I went through all the binders and pulled out all the best-looking recipes, and now we can flip through them anytime. I can see it being useful to have the girls flip through and pick out some things they would like to eat every now and then, too.

Here’s what we’ll be making this week (reminder: if you’re reading via an RSS feed, you may need to click through to see the embedded pins):

The first recipe Jon picked out of the recipe binder:

One pot always wins me over:

Will likely serve these tuna cakes with cheesy grits and sautéed zucchini:

I have a bunch of kale that needs to be used before it disintegrates, so this tried-and-true recipe will take care of it, and it’s another one pot recipe:

And because I have a craving for some Costa Rican deliciousness, gallo pinto:

What about you? What’s on your menu this week? Made anything tasty lately?

March 7, 2016March 7, 2016

menu planning monday

Back by popular demand, our next few dinners on deck. My favorite thing we ate last week? The spinach and mushroom lasagna. I even made my own noodles with the pasta maker I got for my birthday, and they turned out amazing. The spring vegetable paella also turned out fabulous, even though I didn’t remember to get pimientos and threw in some saffron for extra flavor. We ate it with fried eggs, and Claire had like 3 helpings! We still haven’t eaten all the meals I planned last week, so we’ll be having the cauliflower and chickpea tacos this week for sure.

Other things we’ll be eating this week (note, if you’re viewing this in an RSS reader, you may need to click through to see embedded images and be able to click through to recipes):

We’ll likely have this potato tortilla with a side of salad and some olives and cheese, pretend we’re in Spain:

Recently our girls have been liking roasted brussels sprouts, so I think this is worth a try:

Might make a bean and corn salad to serve on the side with these tostadas:

We’re also hosting a Friday Night Meatballs this week (with eggplant based “meatballs” since we gave up meat for Lent–I may even try to write up my recipe for these, so look for it next week) and planning to go to our friends’ house for dinner another night, so that’s it for this week’s plans!

In other food news, my love for Michael Pollan is well-documented, so you won’t be shocked to learn that I love his docu-series “Cooked” on Netflix. On the night we watched the third episode, I immediately got up and mixed up some bread dough because I was so inspired! Check it out, for sure!

March 1, 2016

menu planning now that we’re mostly vegetarian

Since I’m home alone on a rainy day luxuriously planning meals and making my grocery list while my husband has the kids at the science museum, I thought I’d follow up my post about our recent diet change with a post about how this has affected our meal planning and eating.

Spoiler alert: it actually hasn’t affected it all that much. You may remember from my “meal planning for the easily bored” post that I rely heavily on hyper-organized Pinterest boards to plan our meals. When we decided to commit to being mostly vegetarian (really, we’re pescatarian), I went through my pinboards and micro-organized them further. Instead of just a pasta board, I now have a vegetarian pasta board, and it’s up top. I did the same with soups and stews, Tex/Mex/Tacos, and veg+grain meals. Now all the boards that are compliant with how we’re eating are right up top and easy to find.

Today, I checked out what we already have on hand and what’s on sale at our local store and then opened up Pinterest. I picked out one vegetarian pasta, one vegetarian soup, one vegetarian tacos, one veggie+grain, and one seafood recipe. I mostly eat leftovers for lunch, and the kids eat sandwiches/soups/cheese and crackers/fruit, so I really only plan dinner recipes and keep basics on hand for breakfasts and lunches: bread, yogurt, eggs, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, jelly, etc. Planning dinners is really the bulk of my menu-planning.

If you’re curious about what we’re having for dinner this week, here’s what’s on deck:

In other family food news, Jon and I went on a marriage retreat over the weekend, and one thing we discussed was having him cook more. I happily do most of the cooking because, if you haven’t guessed, I love cooking and see it as a creative outlet. He usually takes the kids to the park in the afternoons, so I really enjoy my me-time in the kitchen, listening to podcasts and making good food. However. we’ve realized that our girls may not realize that I cook because I love it, and might get the idea that cooking is a woman’s job. Since he has a flexible schedule that often has him home in the evenings, he could totally cook– I just haven’t offered him the opportunity. We want the girls to see that their dad is also competent in the kitchen, and that it is reasonable for them to expect a partner who shares cooking duties. Since I kind of usurped the kitchen years ago, I will likely at first set him up for success by doing some of the prep work, almost like a Blue Apron sort of thing, but I am going to try to stay out of his hair and let him do his thing.

You can often check out our meals on Instagram, where I often use the hashtag #bigdinnerlittledinner to document what we’re eating. I’ll let you know when a meal was prepared by my better half, too!