Hey y'all. So last night after scanning through the recipes in The American Cancer Society's New Healthy Eating Cookbook by Jeanne Besser, I picked out five of them to try out on my family this week. Which meant I needed to write a shopping list. The recipes I chose were Peanut Noodles with Snow Peas and Broccoli, Fusilli with Broccoli and Deconstructed Pesto, Honey-Lime Pork Tenderloin, Spinach and Mushroom Risotto, and Roasted Cauliflower with Parmesan and Thyme. I'm not going to lie, I'm a little worried about the peanut noodles because I've never been able to successfully cook edible asian inspired food before, and the risotto scares me because I've watched Masterchef and Joe Bastianich said risotto is hard and I believe him. But I also LOVE rice, and that's the main ingredient in risotto so...
Anyway, I got my shopping list together and headed to the store, where I got to try and find the ingredients I needed. I failed to find snow peas (and I'm not exactly sure what they're called in German, so I don't trust in my ability to find them on the economy here), so I'm hoping that baby sugar snap peas will work for that recipe. I also almost failed to find pine nuts for the deconstructed pesto, because it didn't initially occur to me that they would be located in the baking aisle with all the other unsalted nuts. I've never used pine nuts in a recipe before, so this should be interesting.
I also bought mushrooms today, and for those of you who don't know me, I have a mental hangup about mushrooms. I have no problem eating them as long as I don't see them, even if I know they are in a dish I'm eating, but once I see them, I have to pick them out. So I've never cooked with mushrooms before, but I don't want to start changing recipes right off the bat if I can keep from it, so I'm going to try to ignore the fact that my risotto has mushrooms in it, while actively putting mushrooms in it.
But back to the shopping trip. Aside from the snow peas, I managed to find everything I needed eventually. A few of the items took some searching, but they made their way into my cart nonetheless. I even managed to do a pretty good job of sticking to my list for a change. There were a couple extra things I picked up (quinoa because they had larger bags of it right at the front of the store and I know it's an ingredient in a few other recipes from this book, a watermelon because I have children and it's a healthy snack, and some English muffins which this book lists as a healthy snacking option as well). What I found disappointing is that the ingredients for three meals, two side dishes, and a few snacks cost me $100. Granted I didn't do any shopping around to find the best bargain in town because the commissary on base is my only shopping option where I can shop in English, and I would need to do the translations before heading to a grocery store on the economy here in Germany to make sure I was getting what I needed (and I just wasn't up to that today), and it is more expensive to shop over here in general (because of shipping costs on base, and VAT taxes on the economy). Also, some of the ingredients will last for more than just these three meals, I may have even gone overboard with several of the ingredients in an effort to make sure I got enough of them to make the meals in the first place. So some of that cost does fall on my shoulders. Obviously I'm going to have to find a balance between healthy eating and our budget (and I may just have to do some translating and hit up the Lidl that is just up the street from my house, I hear they have really good prices on produce.)
So that's where I stand for now. I won't be testing out my first recipe until Friday because I have plans tomorrow evening to help out a friend with some last minute pre-PCS errands because they no longer have a car here. So check back Friday night for my first recipe review, and be sure to subscribe to my blog if you have even the slightest bit of interest in keeping up with what I post. - Katie
