14-21: Pear Pandowdy

14-21: Pear Pandowdy

Here’s a very basic dessert recipe: 14-21: Pear Pandowdy. Pandowdies are typically made with apples, but Simply Delicious offers a pear variation which is also popular. Both are in season right now, so either one would work for this recipe if you’re looking for something to do with all of that fall produce.

Here’s more info on pandowdies, courtesy of New England.com:

An old-fashioned favorite, the pandowdy is, by definition, a cooked fruit dessert sweetened with maple syrup or molasses and topped with a pie pastry. The name refers to the act of “dowdying” the crust — that is, breaking it up with a knife and pressing it into the bubbling juices — midway through baking. While it’s not the prettiest of pastries, what it lacks in streamlined good looks it more than makes up for in rich flavor. 

Yankee Magazine, August 2020

Let’s see how close Simply Delicious gets to their definition. They sell this thing much better than I do.


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7-31: Lime Cayenne Pork Chops

7-31: Lime Cayenne Pork Chops

In these trying times (are you tired of hearing that yet?), it’s important to make the food you have go as far as you can, and to reduce the amount of food being wasted. Even before “the Rona“, I’ve been spending many a Saturday (or Sunday) meal-prepping for the upcoming week, which has brought down our grocery bills (and our waistlines, but apparently not as quickly).

7-31: Lime Cayenne Pork Chops was part of a “pork chop” meal-prep week, prepared in tandem with 7-53: Cider-Braised Pork Chops and served with some mixed roasted potatoes courtesy of the CSA box. It’s “meat and potatoes”, but maybe with a healthier twist?

My mom apparently made this back in November 1993, and it was “good” and “easy”. I’m not sure who ranked it as such (since she doesn’t eat pork), but we’ll go with that recommendation.


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2-5: Caribbean Seafood Salad

2-5: Caribbean Seafood Salad

Every so often throughout this project, I run into entries that make no sense, culinarily. I’ll admit–my knowledge of Caribbean cuisine is probably more limited compared to other types. However, I find it hard to believe that 2-5: Caribbean Seafood Salad is an “authentic” representation of a real Caribbean dish.

The other similar recipes I’ve found for “Caribbean seafood salad” include pineapple, papaya, and/or mango, and all look much better than this apple/banana/asparagus mess. Keep that in mind–there’s better ways to use these ingredients (and to make a “Caribbean seafood salad”) than what they’re out here trying to do.


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16-42: Easy Lime Pie

16-42: Easy Lime Pie

If you were around in the 1980s-1990s, you may remember the obsession with low-fat everything, and finding ways to make “sinful indulgences” into something “guilt-free“. Note the deliberate choice of words, and that we still use that type of psychological framing around food today (and have been for a long time, even prior to the era in question).

The “low-calorie swap” in 16-42: Easy Lime Pie is cottage cheese, which was all the rage in the 1970s as a “healthy” option, but could still be found in a lot of recipes throughout the 80s and 90s.

I feel like even Simply Delicious didn’t really know how to make this pie sound appealing–do you think halved grapes as a garnish can be considered something notable? You can definitely tell this particular recipe was aimed at the dieting/low-calorie crowd.


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14-9: Glazed Crêpes with Pears

14-9: Glazed Crêpes with Pears

I think 14-9: Glazed Crêpes with Pears might be my final untested crêpe recipe from Simply Delicious–but there may be others in there. I’ll even give you a quick spoiler (since this recipe is kind of boring…another spoiler) for upcoming posts–there are more recipes out there than what I had originally. I know because I found (and purchased) some in a local Goodwill.

I’ve still got quite a few posts to go before I dig into some of the *NEW* recipes (and show you the book they came in), but for now, you can read about yet another crêpe recipe after the jump. But this time, with pears! And glaze!


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15-45: Strawberries with Cottage Cheese

15-45: Strawberries with Cottage Cheese

I had extra strawberries left over from 14-22: Strawberry-Peach Cobbler, so I tried to reuse them into 15-45: Strawberries with Cottage Cheese. Simply Delicious is big on using cottage cheese in an effort to be “low-fat” (all the rage in the 1980s when this book was published) and healthy, but they’re not usually very successful.

Don’t be deceived by their pretty picture here. It’s not ice cream. It’s cottage cheese. Just keep that in mind going in.


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14-22: Strawberry-Peach Cobbler

14-22: Strawberry-Peach Cobbler

Finally, we’ve reached the first recipe (for this project) made in my new (to you) kitchen: 14-22: Strawberry-Peach Cobbler. It was summer and 4th of July, so something with fruit that goes well with ice cream was bound to be a hit.

Speaking of 4th of July, I made 2-37: Chicken-Salami-Rice Salad for a party that I attended with a guy that I had just started dating. 10 years later, this is the first recipe I cooked in my very first house, that I bought with that same guy (who I ended up marrying not long after I made that first recipe).

Told you this book has some memories.


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15-17: Summery Cantaloupe

15-17: Summery Cantaloupe

Obviously, the name of this recipe is 15-17: Summery Cantaloupe, and if you’ve seen any of the pictures of the recipe (like above, as a header image), you’ve put it together that the melon pictured is in fact, not a cantaloupe.

The CSA box that week provided a very nice watermelon, and so that’s what I went with for part of my Mother’s Day 2019 brunch (MD2019). Yes, I’m also behind on writing these up.

I’ve made Simply Delicious fruit salads for Mother’s Day before–if you’re looking for similar ideas, check out 15-19: Layered Fruit Salad and 15-30: Champagne Sundaes from 2017‘s brunch. If you’re up for the challenge of carving a cantaloupe (or in my case, watermelon), continue on.


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9-23: Fruity Sausage Kebabs

9-23: Fruity Sausage Kebabs

It’s fruit, and it’s sausage–on a kebab. Not much more to 9-23: Fruity Sausage Kebabs than that. We gave up our BBQ grill a few years ago after our apartment changed owners and haven’t purchased a new one yet since we bought our house. However, that’s okay: you can do these kebabs with just a toaster oven or broiler.

9-23: Fruity Sausage Kebabs is the last recipe I have (as of now) for Group 9: Ground Meat & Sausage. I assume there are other ones out there (since my numbers jump around a bit, especially at the end), but this is it for this group for me. Every so often, I’ll get email requests for particular recipes, and it’s always for ones I don’t have–apologies for that, this project was never intended to be a complete listing of all of the available recipes.


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16-45: Raspberry Tartlettes

16-45: Raspberry Tartlettes

I’ve used this project as an excuse to make dishes to share at work before. This time, I made 16-45: Raspberry Tartlettes for a quarterly staff meeting. I had a colleague that was interested in trying vegan recipes and another that required gluten-free dishes, so I tried to incorporate both in this attempt.

I had originally bought tartlette tins for 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes, and I’m just glad I’ve finally found another use for them. There’s also 16-9: Raspberry Tart, if you’re looking for something a bit larger, but in the same ballpark.

Did you notice that there already was a #45 for Group 16? 16-45: Colonial Apple Cake is also 16-45. Good job, Simply Delicious. 🙄


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