Hi everyone. It’s been a few months since I last participated in the In My Kitchen linky, because I didn’t do much of note in the kitchen. This month I finally got active in the kitchen again, so I’m participating in the linky again.
First, I got some cake mixes for my birthday last month, so on July 3, I set out to bake one of the cakes. I got strawberry, raspberry and lemon-flavored cake mixes and selected the one with strawberry. To be honest, I had expected there to be more strawberries in it. It in fact looks like a plain yellow cake and that’s what it tasted like too.
Over the next few weeks, I was greatly struggling and didn’t do anything in the kitchen. That is, maybe I created a smoothie once, but I’m not even sure about that.
Speaking of smoothies though, I did create several that I loved over the past month. One, I made yesterday. I used frozen cherries, vanilla-flavored soy milk, cacao powder, instant coffee, a little honey and a dash of sea salt to make the flavors pop.
About two weeks ago, I finally got the idea again to whip something up and I decided to make overnight oats.
I made overnight oats once again this week, topping them with a tropical dried fruit mix that has an E Nutriscore, meaning it is about the least healthy food choice in its category. No photo this time.
A staff who is on sick leave and occasionally pops round as an extra, offered to help me cook a meal for my side of the home the next Tuesday. I cooked curried rice with chicken, bell peppers and bok choy. I hadn’t had bok choy since childhood and incorrectly assumed its green leaves can’t be eaten. The meal doesn’t look as thin as I believe a curry should be, but it was delicious.
The same staff came over here this Tuesday again and I was again allowed to choose a meal and cook it with her help. I chose a vegetarian pasta bake with peppers, onions, garlic, canned tomato chunks and topped with mozzarella. One of my fellow clients said she didn’t like the mozzarella, but I think it was because she didn’t recognize it and I believe she did eat it after all. Everyone else loved my meal. Next time, however, I’m going to leave some of the seeds of the peppers in, because I’d have loved it even more than I did now with a little more spice.
Since I have been cooking more lately, I decided to look for an app to organize my recipes. After trying many apps, I settled on Recipe Keeper. Like I mentioned in my coffee share last week, one of its drawbacks is the fact that I can’t have my password manager save the password. This makes me a little suspicious, but I try not to care.
A Multitude of Musings 
Sad that the cake mix wasn’t what you expected.
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Yeah indeed. My parents, who gave it to me as a present, probably had even higher expectations, since they bought it at a local bakery/mill.
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You have been cooking a nice variety of things. The vegetarian pasta bake looks especially delicious.
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Thanks so much. It was very good indeed.
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It can suck when something we bake doesn’t turn out as nice as we hoped it would, but as long as the cake was editable then not a fail
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Thanks. It wasn’t a fail indeed and the disappointing aspect wasn’t due to the baking process.
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sounds like you were busy this past month cooking up a storm! All of your food sounds so yummy!
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Thank you. The food was delicious indeed.
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It might be nice to have some fresh fruit that echos the type of cake, like strawberries to go with the strawberry cake, raspberries to go with the raspberry cake and lemon curd to go with the lemon cake or lemon something. My husband uses bok choy a lot and the leaves cook down to almost nothing, like spinach does.
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Thanks for these tips. Re bok choy, I remember eating it raw as a child and my parents never used the leaves.
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What a shame about the cake mix but I hope it was at least tasty (even if it wasn’t the taste that you’d expected!) Your veggie pasta bake looks delish and I love your plates!
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Thanks a lot for commenting. The cake was okay and the pasta bake was good indeed.
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All of your meals look delicious. Especially the pasta bake.
Sorry about the cakes, sometime things aren’t what we were wanting.
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Thanks for your kind comment. The cake was okay, but I’m mainly disappointed because my parents probably paid more for the mix than would’ve been reasonable, thinking it was locally-produced (which it wasn’t). Not that it was on the package that it was, of course.
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I like the sound of the smoothie, and i do love some overnight oats. Disappointing when a cake doesn’t come out the way you hope 🙂 That is a bit odd about the password keeper. Thanks so much for joining in with IMK this month. Cheers and have a great August.
sherry
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Thank you. Re the Recipe Keeper app, I think this app doesn’t specify when creating an account which website the password will be for, which means my password manager won’t have a way to remember it. There should be a way to do it, but I could also easily have the app send me a recovery E-mail.
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How disappointing to go to all of the trouble to bake and then not have it turn out to be what you expected. At least your smoothie and pasta salad were winners! Have a great week.
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Thank you! The cake wasn’t all that much work, since it was a mix that you only had to add eggs and butter to.
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Great job with cakes! That’s a shame they wasn’t more strawberries in it and your smoothies sound good!
I love the look of your chicken curry meal and the pasta bake.
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Thanks so much! The smoothie was absolutely delish indeed.
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Your curry dish looks wonderful! Keep it up, cooking seems to brighten the spirit, I know it does mine!
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Thank you! Cooking definitely lifts my mood.
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A cake mix in a hurry is great, but I am not a huge fan of using them. (Personal preference) but as you received it as a gift, good on using it.Your curry dish does look so good.Visiting via Sherry’s Pickings: In my KitchenMy entries this month #10+11Hope to see you also share with https://esmesalon.com/tag/seniorsalonpitstop/
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Thanks for stopping by. I would much prefer to add my own ingredients to a cake too, but this was a good one to make when I didn’t have much time or energy.
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I have been craving pasta and more specifically pasta bakes recently. Yours looks delicious!
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Thank you so much. I love pasta and especially pasta bakes too.
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Too bad the strawberry cake mix did not have more berries in it. You mentioned that and my first thought was a strawberry cake and add some mini chocolate chips to give it a kick – I love chocolate and strawberries mixed. Keep up the cooking. Now I am thinking a vegetarian pasta dish for tonight sounds good.
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Thanks for your kind comment. I’m glad I inspired you with my pasta bake.
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You are welcome.
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I am going to have to try adding a pinch of salt to my smoothies! Sounds like it would really make the flavours pop as you say 🙂
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I’m glad I inspired you. I got the idea from a smoothie website.
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Wow, you have been busy! All of this yummy food is making me hungry. Save me a seat when you next have pasta bake, it looks delish. 🙂Have a lovely week, Astrid.
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Thanks so much for your kind words. The pasta bake was good indeed.
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