October Challenge—Try Something New! (& A Giveaway)
Prior to last May when Kate, Toni, and I blogged in our 3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days series, there wasn’t a great deal of variety in my family’s meals from week to week. I probably had a grand total of five regular meals that I would occasionally cook — meatloaf, spaghetti, chicken and mashed potatoes, taco salad, and beef and cheddar casserole. Part of the reason that my kitchen repertoire was so small was because I was cooking so infrequently due to my afternoon schedule of teaching piano lessons. But the other part — and really the main reason — was that I simply lacked the confidence to try out new recipes.
But with my participation in our 3 Moms series, all that changed. I started cooking more, trying new recipes — and discovered I liked cooking! And this month at Happy to be at Home, we are challenging our readers to do the same — to try new recipes. (Now for those of you who are still a little nervous in the kitchen, and especially about trying new recipes, Kate wrote a fantastic post about having courage in the kitchen here.)
Where can I find new recipes?
If you’re looking for cooking inspiration, here are just a few suggestions:
- Dig out your own cookbooks. You know, those dusty cookbooks at the back of your kitchen cabinet that you haven’t cracked open in years? (At least that’s what my cookbooks looked like.) A good cookbook can be your best friend in the kitchen. Recipes are written out in detail, and often include great photos of the finished product. If you don’t own any cookbooks, your local library will probably have some available for check out.
- Recipe websites such as AllRecipes, Food Network, Simply Recipes, Tammy’s Recipes, Zesty Cook, and Recipe Zaar. And of course I can’t forget to mention our very own Happy to be at Home recipe page and cookbook. Many of these sites allow you to search recipes according to ingredients or type of dish. There are often comprehensive reviews of the recipes which will help you know ahead of time how well the recipe might turn out, and whether any changes need to be (or can be) made to the recipe.
- Menu Plan Monday allows you to access the menu plans of hundreds — if not thousands — of bloggers; it’s a wonderful way to find new, family-friendly recipes. Another great thing about Menu Plan Monday is that you can often contact the blogger directly if you have specific questions about the meals they’ve listed.
Tips for making new recipes
Regardless of where you find your new recipes to try, there are a few more things which may help when actually preparing and serving the recipes.
- Make sure you have all the ingredients on hand. If a new recipe requires the purchase of something you don’t have on hand, either postpone making the recipe (obviously) or consider a substitution. If you got the recipe online, read through the comments to see if other users made any substitutions in the ingredients.
- Read through the entire recipe (including the directions) before you start making it. This sounds like such a obvious suggestion, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made a new recipe without reading through it first, only to realize too late that I’d made some egregious error in my preparation that rendered the dish less presentable at best or inedible at worst.
- Lay out all the measured ingredients ahead of time. Kate’s post on mise en plase (in other words, having all of your prep work done and set by the stove before you actually begin cooking) explains this concept well. This is a must with new recipes. Unfamiliarity with the directions can cause you to overcook things because you don’t have all the ingredients ready.
- If you have picky eaters in your family, involve them in preparing the meal with you. Having a picky eater help in the preparations might increase the chances that he or she will actually try the new dish.
- Try the new dish more than once. If the new recipe isn’t a family hit at first (but it’s at least acceptable to some in the family) consider making it a few more times before you decide to throw it out completely. When we first started making vegetable stir fry a few months ago, only my husband and I liked it. But we continued to make it several more times over the next few weeks. One by one the kids decided they’d try it, too, and now all three kids request the meal often as one of their favorites! This hasn’t happened with every new dish we try, but we’ve noticed that it often takes several introductions of the food before we get used to the new flavors.
If you’d like to take the October Fall Into Cooking Challenge and try some new recipes, we’d love to hear what recipes you’re going to be trying out. Leave a comment to share the recipe with us. If you have a tried-and-true recipe that you’d like to share for others to use, feel free to leave that as well. We’d love to hear how you’re participating in this October Challenge!
****And now for this week’s giveaway****
In keeping with our theme, we’d like to recommend that you also check out the Cook’s Ham website. It has loads of great recipes to try out. Here are a few that really caught my eye.
- Cook’s Ham Tortilla Tree - Doesn’t this look great?
- Havarti Ham Croissants
- Corned Beef, Cabbage and Macaroni Bake
- Pomegranate Ginger-Glazed Ham
- Curried Ham and Vegetable Couscous
- Ham, Pineapple and Cheese Roll
To help give you motivation to try out some new ham recipes, or just for a little boost in purchasing your holiday ham, we have 2 $15 Cook’s Ham coupons to giveaway. The coupons are god for: Cook’s Bone-In & Boneless Hams & Ham Steaks, Cook’s Spiral Sliced Bone-In and Boneless Hams, and Cook’s Corned Beef Brisket. The expiration date is 12/31/2008.
To enter the giveaway, leave us a comment telling us what new recipes you’ll be tackling for our monthly challenge, your favorite tried-and-true recipes, or just your favorite ham meals. We will select 2 winners next Tuesday, October 21st.
Find more Kitchen Tips over at Tammy’s Recipes.
Find more Tackle-It Tuesday over at 5 Minutes For Mom.
AUTHOR | The 3 Moms
The 3 Moms are Toni from The Happy Housewife, Kate from A Simple Walk, and Joy from Five J's. The 3 Moms launched Happy to be at Home in June of 2008 with the goal of offering real encouragement to women in all walks of life.
I’m trying Sweet Potato Soup, Zucchini Omelets and Bacon and Egg Quesadillas! Having a recipe blog forces a great deal of creativity!
Thanks for the challenge and for gathering up more recipes for us all to try!
Erin
Perfect timing. My menu plan this week is full of new recipes for me to try.
http://amysfinerthings.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/menu-plan-1013/
I’m going to attempt my first cake from scratch! A chocolate peanut butter cup cake for my hubbies birthday. It’s a double layer chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting and chopped up Reece’s peanut butter cups in between and on top. I’m excited! Thanks for such an awesome give away. That’s a great coupon and would certainly help out around here for the holidays.
Wow, I would really like to try the tortilla christmas tree. I think that would look great at our big Christmas party this year. I need to try it on family first!!
the tortilla tree looks so yummy and delightfully nice presentation too! Great tips for menu planning and trying out new recipes! Thanks for the info!
I love this because I am in desperate need of a challenge.
Here’s the deal. My husband works nights so I have gotten into the routine of not really cooking much, mainly becuase he’s not there to eat it. But, I’ve decided that there is no reason I can’t cook and freeze meals that I can set out for him just to heat up. I too many recipes to list that I would like to try. I just need to figure out the best things that freeze well and are easy to reheat.
Thanks for the ideas
Here’s favorite bread/dessert of ours that we discovered last fall…
Banana Pumpkin Bread
——————————————————
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
1/3 cup canola oil
1 1/3 cups canned pumpkin puree
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup white sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 9×5 inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl, stir together the mashed banana, eggs, oil, pumpkin, honey and sugar. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, pie spice and cinnamon, stir into the banana mixture until just combined. Fold in the raisins and walnuts if desired. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool loaf in the pan for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.
Adapted from All Recipes…
I made this for the first time last fall and it was a hit! Moist, yummy & the best bread ever!
that looks totally cool! I need to check that out! I’d love to win!
Funny that you would have this today. I have a new recipe already in the crock pot. It’s the Pizza Rice Casserole from the More With Less Cookbook. It’s supposed to be baked, but my kids have piano lessons after school, so I’m using the crock pot instead. Hopefully it will be a new favorite.
Thanks so much for the shout out. I do very much agree with the Monday Meal plans… something we do as well is plan on sunday and prepare food on sunday for the week if we know wea re going to be in a rush … like casseroles, etc
It’s slow going, but I did actually get something into the Crockpot today!
http://www.theimperfectblog.com/2008/10/14/im-cooking/
Thank you for all the encouragement.
I love to try new recipes and pouring over cookbooks and recipe sites. My family is my guinea pigs and do it happily for the most part. LOL! Besides Friday, we are having a new recipe each day - http://lampuntomyfeetandalightuntomypath.blogspot.com/2008/10/menu-planning-for-oct-13-20.html
Thank you so much for the giveaway and encouragement to try new things!
I plan to try broccoli and cheese soup and butternut squash soup this month. My favorite ham recipes are baked ham with brown sugar and syrup, and broccoli and ham casserole.
I love some free food!
I like to try new recipes. I found a couple recently that I have made that were delicious. Crock pot beef stroganoff and apple pound cake. I love searching the recipes on allrecipes.com and foodnetwork.com
We purchased a new refrigerator. They were back ordered so they won’t deliver until November 1st. Therefore I will be emptying out our old fridge and using up the contents and tossing out the unfathomable science experiments.
I am going to try some Ethnic Breads in the bread machine this month. I just checked out a library book today and am very excited to try something exotic.
Cherry pie! My daughter has been bugging me to help her make one…hopefully her pie crust will turn out better than mine usually do. She just got the cookbook “How to Boil Water” and it has a pie crust recipe we’ll probably use.
I am taking on my boyfriend’s mother’s meatloaf this week! MY food is often compared to hers and how it is better or hers is better so here is hoping I can pull off her meatloaf!
[...] for entering everyone! And don’t forget to enter this week’s $15 off Cook’s Ham coupons giveaway. Bookmark It Hide [...]
My daughter has requested ham bean soup, minestrone, split pea soup - all in the last week.
Unfortunately I am fresh out of ham bones….I cook seasonally and haven’t bought that first autumn ham yet. When it is still in the 80’s it is hard to think soup!
One of my favorite ham recipes is for corn chowder.
It’s still in the mid-eighties here too, so I haven’t been making many soups yet, but it sure is a good one.
How funny…I just tried your Pizza Pocket recipe for the first time last night. And blogged about it of course. I actually have a list of recipes I want to try listed on my sidebar that I am slowly making my way through.
Thanks!
I am going to try Apricot Mustard-Glazed Ham Steaks, sounds so good.
janetfaye (at) gmail (dot) com
I have been fretting for over a week trying to figure out what to cook for a luncheon at my children’s school that is in two weeks. Bingo I came to ou web site and there it is. I am going to be making the Cook’s Ham Tortilla Tree. Fabulous idea thank-you so much for all of the great recipes.
tamben7996(at)aol(dot)com