Kitchen Express and Greenling scorecard

Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express: 2.5 successes out of 3 tries so far. The honey orange chicken (substituted tenders and added garlic) paired with the carrot and raisin couscous (added slivered almonds and green onion tops) topped with a dollop of lemon zest plain yogurt was tasty, easy, and kid friendly. The pea and bacon linguine was tasty, and happily consumed by all, but I felt like it was pasty, not to make a rhyme. I did add a shot of half and half, and maybe a shot of olive oil is needed. It also seemed higher mess to me, as does anything that requires the blender, which then requires cleaning. But all in all, I like that the recipes are more suggestions than instructions, are easy to tweak based on preferences, and seem to be based on flavor profiles, with speed being a side benefit, instead of the other way around.

Greenling: let's say 75% successful. I'm a sucker for the novelty of delivery to my door, and of course it automatically won there. The apples are beautiful, but sadly, the pears are fairly battered. Tasty, but battered, and not in that Texas State Fair deep-fried way, either. They didn't have bunch carrots in stock this week, so it was deducted from my order, but it does make it tricky to base a menu around their delivery. I found myself grating baby carrots for the couscous salad today. And they gave me an incorrect item, although when I called them, they offered to bring out the correct one today and let me keep the incorrect one. I will order again, and plan on having a weekly sort of lunch makings basket delivered. This week was hummus, tabouleh and basil, along with wonderful Sweetish Hill bread, and next week I'll stick with the bread, but change out my sandwich fillings.

On another front, I baked challah bread on Sunday, using Chef Darla's recipe. It was easier and less sticky than I anticipated, and it made a godzilla sized loaf. The crust isn't my favorite, but the texture is spectacular, and makes scrumptious toast!

End of the Week musings

Thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I'm going to give Mark Bittman's "Kitchen Express" a whirl next week. I'm starting with a linguine in pea sauce with bacon (subbed for the prosciutto), and an orange honey chicken with a couscous side. On glancing through the cookbook, it looks like a more streamlined, yet simultaneously more gourmet Rachael Ray, with more room for personal creativity. I have high hopes...
I'm also trying Greenling for the first time next week, thanks to my new Groupon addiction. I'm very excited. I'm having some produce delivered, as well some prepared foods. I do love packages delivered to my door, and especially if there's something yummy inside of them! I'm not feeling up to the local box yet, where undisclosed produce appears weekly, and then I have the challenge of figuring out what to do with it. For the time being, I'm just building my own boxes, while knowing exactly what I'm going to do with it!
I'm not baking too many sweets right now, but my recipe sweet tooth is apparently alive and well. I came across a couple today that I want to try - the KAF no-knead sticky rolls and their chocolate snack cake. It will be interesting to see how the former compares to the Cooking Light sticky rolls, which I found really successful, and not overly taxing. The KAF version is based on one of the Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day recipes, so we'll see...

This weekend will be a lovely sampler of good ol' Texas cuisine. We're headed to the Salt Lick tonight and to Marble Falls for pumpkin picking and the Bluebonnet Cafe tomorrow. Yeehaw!