Some Food I Might Want to Eat

Bingo Square: Delicious!

I’m searching for the perfect recipe book. One that is filled with Carrie-friendly, quick, no fuss food that tastes great. I have seen a bunch of reviews for Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings and wondered, is this it??

I’m aware that I’m asking a lot of these books. I basically want them tailored to me, which wouldn’t bring in the big bucks I’m sure. But I’m tired of getting cookbooks and paging through to find one or two recipes I like or would even attempt. Long lists of ingredients and fiddly processes just put me right off. I have toddler twins who try to throw themselves out of windows if I turn my back, I don’t have time to prep anything!

Teigen’s book did sadly fall into this category for me too. The food looks amazing! I bet it tastes amazing! I am never going to attempt 99% of it. And this is pretty pared down stuff for most of it. I am just not good with food. Until I was about thirty I ate like a toddler. I lived on white food (bread, chicken, pasta, potatoes, and the only vegetable I ate was cauliflower). I had some sort of food awakening and I now eat a lot more, but I clearly haven’t caught up to these chefs.

I don’t usually read the preamble in cook books because hey! I’m here for the recipes not your chatter. But this is short and sweet and funny, and the little snippets at the top of each recipe are cute too. I love how mad she gets about hash browns vs home fries because yes! They are not the same thing! This happens here (Vancouver) all the time and I am endlessly disappointed when a menu states hash browns but my plate does not contain them. Also the rant about John’s Mac n cheese made me laugh. 

I think every single recipe calls for Kosher salt. I don’t really put salt in my cooking (shocked gasps from the crowd). It just makes it taste…salty? Which is fine and all but I prefer other flavours. All chefs everywhere roll their eyes at me.

I tried two of her recipes though, and they both turned out great. First I made the Yellow Cake Baked Oatmeal. (How many kinds of wrong is it to have cake mix in your oatmeal? I’m British and had a grandmother who was amazing at baking, she would be outraged at me using a box cake mix). This doesn’t seem like it should be an acceptable breakfast food. It can’t be good for you, can it? But my 15 month olds adored it and I’ve had to cut April off since she was sticking her face into the bowl. Am I terrible parent for feeding them this? It’s cake…ish. There’s too much guilt with this dish, but I might make it again, many months from now.

I also made Baked Pasta Alla Norma, except I changed it a bit and cheated. I used garlic and mixed herbs on my aubergine (sorry, eggplant!) because I didn’t want red pepper flakes, and I used tomato sauce from a jar instead of making hers (see above re: twin toddlers and no time for this). It was ridiculously tasty and will give us leftovers for days. I haven’t tried it out on my girls yet but here’s hoping it’s a winner. I also think it could be the go-to dish I’ve been looking for to take to ‘pot lucks’. Canadians seem to be big on pot lucks and I barely know what they are. I’ve avoided many events because they’ve asked me to bring a dish. What dish?? It’s too much pressure. So this is the one.

But no. And alas, this is not the sacred tome I have been looking for. But it is a super fun cook book and if you’re better at food than I am (and dare I say, just a little bit more adventurous?) you’ll probably like it a lot.