Recipe Clippings

In my family I am known for hoarding, and one of the many things I hoard are recipes.  The funny thing about this is, I am not known for cooking well, ha-ha!

Anyway, about once a month one of the local grocery stores prints a magazine full of recipe ideas based on products they sell, called Allerhande.  I keep them, well, almost all of them... and for years.  All with the good intentions of cooking some of the lovely ideas.

Well, during a big clean up my husband came across my stacks of Albert Heijn magazines and was not pleased.  He wanted me to toss the stack out but I convinced him to compromise... I was 1st going to cut out the recipes I want then recycle the rest of the magazine.  

This project sounded simple, I would be done in no time, reducing the stack to 1/8 of what it was.  Turns out it takes a lot longer per magazine than I imagined, I am still occasionally pulling one out and sifting through it.  

I was proud of my progress until my husband mentioned that if I was going to keep the clippings I was also going to have to actually cook some of the recipes.  Hmm.  This meant actually remembering to buy the items at the store... or actually risk wasting the food if I failed... or facing the reality half of the recipes are things I like but that doesn't mean my daughter or husband eat them.

Since this all started a couple months ago, I am happy to say I have tried at least 3 recipes.  And funnily enough they are all from the same clipping (oh jeez)!

The rosemary-pepper beef on skewers was a bit of a concern for my hubby.  It had a lot of hot red peppers and ran the risk of being too spicy to eat.  He thought I made a mistake somewhere, but in the end it was just flavorful and not overbearing.  Well, as long as you didn't lick your fingers.

The grilled chicken with avocado & corn salsa was also good.  The Tabasco mixed in added an interesting flavor.  I probably overdid the salsa, it was extremely filling, but it was all tasty and I was happy with the results.  Even if I didn't actually grill the chicken on the bbq.

And the empanadas, well, they looked great, the texture was perfect, but for some reason there was a total lack of flavor.  Apparently I made a mistake somewhere.  I thoroughly enjoyed making them & eating them, and next time I'll pay better attention to the recipe... there was marinating time in there somewhere that I left out due to time.

See, when making the recipes I have to translate them from Dutch to English, and sometimes I can miss something until too late or all together, oops!  I will not let it stop me though.  I have plenty more recipes to try out, and that's without touching the 8 cookbooks I already have.  One day I'll get to them too, hopefully before my husband asks me to throw them out also!!!

Bye! Dag! Adios! Namaste! Salut!

:) Danica

Wordless Wednesday #72

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Albert Heijn

Today I want to talk about a great service Albert Heijn offers.  (For those of you in The States it's an equivalent to Publix).  They deliver groceries!  It's awesome, I think I can count on both hands how many times I've stepped foot in a grocery store in the past two years, it's wonderful!  It all started when I was around 6 months pregnant and Ryan broke his ankle.

Ryan couldn't drive and there was no way I could shuffle to and from the grocery store carrying enough food to full the fridge.  I had heard about the delivery service through a friend, a busy Mom with two small kids (you know who you are) and decided to try it out.  In the beginning I was only going to use it until Ryan was healed and back driving again, but like I said, I'm still using it.  It probably seems crazy to some of you and lazy to others, but really it's a time and money saver.  Oh yeah, and it's saved me and Ryan from plenty of petty arguments.  (There was always the argument about when we were going to go and then we argued while there about it taking too long.  If you know Ryan and I well, you know we bicker a lot, but we like it that way).  You're probably asking yourself how it saves money considering there are delivery fees, well, for the first time I paid attention to the sales.  (I always watched for sales when it came to clothes and other things but never at the grocery store).  I guess I didn't watch for sales because it was always buy 2 get 1 free, was I really going to walk (or ride my scooter) with 3 large boxes of laundry detergent plus groceries, no way.  But now that they deliver it to my front door of course I'll buy all three, it's not breaking my back!  The money I save on watching the sales makes up for the delivery fees and then some.  I go online and order groceries for the entire week, so not only am I watching for sales I am also planning the meals.  (Something I never considered prior to having a child).  Plus there are no more sporadic purchases; you know the ones, you walk passed the cookies and toss them in the cart just because they look good.  It's another way to save money, in the past I would easily add another 10-20 euros to my bill just because it looked good.  What's also nice is they also take your recycling for you (not basic paper, plastic, and glass) but the soda and beer bottles you get money back for at the stores.  They figure in the costs and then deduct the amount from the bill, also a time saver.  I am an avid online shopper, going to a store sounds like torture, so grocery shopping online fit right into my lifestyle.  I've tried to convince everyone I know to use Albert Heijn's delivery service (www.ah.nl/Webwinkel) but not many of my friends/family agree with me, oh well, their loss!  If you read this and think, hey sounds good, then be sure to mention me in your first purchase and we each get 10 euros off our next purchase (I love saving money).  Here's a better photo of what the deliveries look like (cold foods in one bag, freezer foods in another, and everything else in crates) :

This picture is recent and I purely took it for my blog, don't think it's a usual habit to photgraph my groceries.  The other photo was taken because it was all new and exciting, plus I was pregnant and wanted to document everything (I'm not pregnant now and still document everything, hmm, trait of mine, I guess).  Notice the picture with me in it was blurry, that's because Ryan was sitting on a chair with his ankle in cast trying to get a shot that made his pregnant wife happy.  He's a good husband!  Well, this wraps up my blog for today, hope you enjoyed another one of my random fleeting thoughts!