9-7: Cabbage Rolls

9-7: Cabbage Rolls

Cabbage is probably my least favorite cruciferous vegetable. Although cabbage is present in most Chinese food dishes and it doesn’t bother me in that format, however, just the thought of eating plain cabbage is not very appetizing to me. The meatloaf-like mixture inside 9-7: Cabbage Rolls was the most edible part of the dish.  I like that they served it with a blurred out Heineken.

Anything that involves a stuffing and rolling procedure is usually best done in a big batch because they are a pain to put together.


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17-34: Honey White Bread

17-34: Honey White Bread

Here’s yet another white bread recipe for you–Simply Delicious has already covered this territory pretty well with 17-6: Best Ever White Bread and 17-10: Poppy Seed Bread17-6: Honey White Bread is probably more comparable to traditional white store-bought bread (think Wonder Bread) than the other entries thanks to the sweetness added by the honey.🍯

I’d consider this more of a “breakfast” bread than a sandwich bread, but YMMV.


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17-16: Whole Wheat Baguette

17-16: Whole Wheat Baguette

Here’s a simple whole wheat bread recipe. 17-16: Whole Wheat Baguette has “baguette” in the name, but you could use this same recipe to make buns, rolls, sandwich bread, or any other shape you prefer. This is more of a utilitarian recipe more than anything else–nothing fancy here.

Baguettes are indeed long, thin loaves of French bread (French bread being a type of dough, not a type of shape). I made short, thin individual loaves instead, which the Wikipedia article I linked to calls demi-baguettes, although mine are probably even shorter than that. I thought individually-sized ones might be an interesting experiment instead of one or two long loaves.


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17-22: Bread Loaves with Creamy Filling

17-22: Bread Loaves with Creamy Filling

One of the last few from the “in-the-queue-way-too-long” batch, here’s 17-22: Bread Loaves with Creamy Filling. I’ve been putting this recipe off for a while–I never seemed to have or remembered to buy cottage cheese to make it. Yes, in another 1980s-lowfat-health-craze-inspired moment, Simply Delicious chooses to sacrifice flavor for “health benefits”, this time by stuffing whole wheat bread with herb-flavored cottage cheese.

See? “Healthy” is right there in the description. Now, 30+ years later, we’ve determined that fats are probably better for you than we thought back then, and carbs/sugar are probably a lot worse for you. Remember, when they make things “low-fat”, they usually have to jack up the sugar to make it somewhat edible. Not really a great strategy for weight loss, as my parents’ yo-yo dieting throughout the 80s, 90s, and beyond can attest to.


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9-13: Hungarian Frittata

9-13: Hungarian Frittata

Frittata is one of my favorite dishes. I could eat eggs all day: morning, noon, and night. I am so happy that the meme of Put an Egg On It has come into existence. A warm egg yolk on top of well done corned beef hash is my favorite application of Put an Egg On It. Sausages and salami inside a bed of scrambled eggs could be a close second for best application of eggs in a dish.

A frittata sounds a lot like an omelette: Eggs, veggies, and meat combined together. The difference is in how the ingredients are combined.


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17-10: Poppy Seed Bread

17-10: Poppy Seed Bread

One of the last entries from the Baked Goods chapter, 17-10: Poppy Seed Bread is essentially white bread with a sprinkling of poppy seeds on top. Simply Delicious shows it as a loaf, but I chose to make it into rolls/buns–since you’re already topping the bread with seeds, it makes it very reminiscent of sesame seed hamburger buns. 🍔

Even 20+ years later, most mentions of poppy seeds inevitably end up referencing this Seinfeld gag, where Elaine’s love for poppy seed muffins keep causing her to test positive for opium on a work-administered drug test.

This often leads to the question: Can poppy seeds really affect a drug test? And the answer, according to the New York Times, is actually “Yes!” 🤔 You’d have to eat a LOT of them (much more than what the recipe for this bread contains) to have it show up at levels that would cause alarm–but the claim does actually have merit.


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1-6: Surprise Sandwich Loaf

1-6: Surprise Sandwich Loaf

Trying to put some new posts out there for you–here’s 1-6: Surprise Sandwich Loaf, which was made with a loaf baked from the dough I used for 20-12: Basic Rolls. I made this to break up into portions and take to work with me for lunch one week. It was delicious when first made, but with most things lost its appeal as the week went on.

I love toasted sandwiches. One of my high school jobs was at a Quizno’s, at which I came up with personal sandwich masterpieces which would be impossible to recreate had I been nothing but a customer. However, while I appreciate the efficiency of an entire toasted sandwich loaf, this particular execution leaves something to be desired.


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4-20: Oven-Baked Tomatoes

4-20: Oven-Baked Tomatoes

I love the appetizer-style dishes featured in Simply Delicious. They are complicated because of making individual portions, but you can prepare them ahead of time to heat and serve when ready. When I make a batch of an appetizer like 4-20: Oven Baked Tomatoes, I like to eat a few right away and then stash the rest in the refrigerator to eat later as a healthy snack.

My family did not grow up eating baked, hollowed-out, stuffed tomatoes, however, that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying this dish.

Editor’s note: Looks like my mom made this one before, and substituted broccoli for mushrooms–that makes sense, she hates mushrooms. She also dislikes tomatoes, so I have no idea why she was making this in the first place. 


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7-29: Polynesian Spareribs

7-29: Polynesian Spareribs

Polynesian-style spareribs are my second or third favorite preparation of spareribs. As I described when I wrote 7-16: Orange-Glazed Spareribs, my grandmother’s recipe for Barbecue Spareribs still can’t be beat. However, these ginger and pineapple glazed ribs are more than acceptable. My dish came out of the oven tender and delicious, and maybe a little burnt from cooking too close to the broiler.

This meal is indeed, delectable, as described by the editors of Simply Delicious. I served this dish at a time of the year when corn-on-the-cob was not in season so my final plate looks a little different. The bright yellow corn would provide a nice contrast to the dark ribs on the plate.


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5-16: Richmond Omelette

5-16: Richmond Omelette

A lot of Simply Delicious‘ recipes are takes on already-established dishes, like 9-4: Swedish Meatballs, 2-13: Waldorf Salad or 3-2: New England Clam Chowder. I did a fair amount of searching for anything that resembled 5-16: Richmond Omelette, but besides some rankings of places to get a good omelette in Richmond, VA, there’s not much out there for that particular dish with that name. 

5-16 Richmond Omelette

I’ve put this one off for a while due to not having port wine on hand. After a trip to the store and a rather haughty store clerk who carded me for it despite the clearly visible gray streaks in my hair, I have the wine–let’s make a weird mushroom omelette-casserole with cheese sauce.


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