Saturday, August 2, 2014

Cook it Up! Cookbook Challenge - July edition


I love to cook and I love cookbooks and so I was thrilled when Trish over at Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity proposed a new challenge centering around using our cookbooks.  The rules are pretty simple.  Focus on using our cookbooks more and link up the first Saturday of the month.

Since it's summer quick and simple are kind of the order of the day when it comes to dinnertime so I pulled out an old favorite that's been collecting dust lately - Southern Living Ultimate Quick and Easy Cookbook.  I didn't do as much cooking as I wanted this month but everything I tried was was pretty tasty.

Smoked Sausage with Warm Potato Salad - a nice warm filling 1 pot meal.

Deviled Chicken Breasts - A breaded chicken in an herbed mustardy wine sauce.  This was good and pretty simple.

Tortellini Carbonara - My favorite.  It's the mini tortellini with cream, bacon, Parmesan, a little garlic and just a touch of bacon grease.  It's not necessary the healthiest dish but it is SOOO good.  It's also easy to double and takes maybe 20 minutes from start to table.

Tarragon Cream Chicken -  I had to make a few changes because I didn't have Tarragon (which is obviously kind of important) but I used about a teaspoon of Penzey's Sunny Parri seasoning and a little parsley and the sauce was lick the pan good.  I put a post it note with the changes on the page with the recipe because this will definitely be happening again!

There's a ton of recipes that I've tagged but didn't manage to get to this month that I'm looking forward to trying soon.

Next month I'm sticking with simple and plan on using Michael Symon's 5 in 5 to add a little freshness to the menu.

6 comments:

  1. Southern Living has great recipes and all of these sound delicious! I chose to experiment with cocktails this month... will stick to food for August though ;-)

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    1. Cocktails sound delicious. I could have used a few this month!

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  2. Southern Living was the inspiration behind my BBQ month last month, too. I was very impressed and would definitely seek out another cookbook by them. Tortellini Carbonara sounds amazing! By the way--have you seen Beth Fish Read's Weekend Cooking? It's a great and fun link-up for all things foodie related! http://www.bethfishreads.com/2014/08/weekend-cooking-best-grilled-chicken.html

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    1. Southern Living has some great recipes. Make the Tortellini Carbonara! It heats up beautifully too. I need to go check out the weekend cooking link. It sounds like my kind of thing. Thanks!

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  3. The sausage with potato salad sounds heavenly! What a fun challenge

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    1. It was so good! Definitely a stick to your ribs kind of meal though maybe better for November than July.

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