One of my resolutions was to try four new recipes each month. Here’s what I tried:

1. 1 Pot Kale Sweet Potato Curry – Minimalist Baker
We used to eat a lot of curry, but after two bouts of food poisoning from curry in two years (once at home, once at a restaurant in Antwerp), it’s been out of rotation for awhile. We had everything on hand, though, so I tentatively suggested this for dinner last week, and oh, I’m so glad I did. I substituted butternut squash for the sweet potato and served it over quinoa – and we ate the entire thing. The toddler finished his and asked (repeatedly) for more cubes. N liked it enough that he suggested we make it again two days later. It was equally good over brown rice, and with twice as much curry as I initially used. We’ll definitely be making this again.

2. Coconut Lentils – Budget Bytes I kicked off the year with a very strict diet after the indulgent holiday season – a week or so of no animal products, grains, artificial sweeteners, or alcohol. I like doing this from time to time in order to reset my habits (and my cravings) – I also find that it helps me get back in the swing of meal planning and cooking, very necessary steps especially when I eat at least one meal per day away from home. I made a big batch of these lentils for a week’s worth of lunches on a Sunday night. My kitchen smelled heavenly – but unfortunately they were really bland on their own, and by day two, I felt sad eating my bowl of porridge. I will make these again, but not as a main dish.

3. The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread – My New Roots I am madly in love with the My New Roots cookbook, and was excited to try this grain-free “bread”. It’s loaded with nuts and seeds and fiber – all good things, right? Except that it came out of the pan sticky, dense, and not really sliceable – and then sat in our bellies like a brick, which is what it also resembled. The LCLOB was apparently the recipe that launched the MNR blog into the stratosphere – but I would assert that it is neither life-changing, nor a loaf, nor really bread. The toddler liked it, but we stuck the rest in the fridge to feed to the squirrels.

4. Spicy Spaghetti Squash with Black Beans
This was another serendipitous recipe that used up a lot of things that we had on hand. We didn’t go for the full in-the-squash presentation – not terribly practical when you’re serving three – but no one seemed to mind. This is another definite rerun.

5. Indian Spiced Cauliflower Soup – Smitten Kitchen
I love cauliflower, and we all love Indian food, but I have to say that the strictly vegan version of this recipe was a little eh. The toddler and I had yogurt in ours which improved the flavor, but something was still off. Maybe it was too watery? We liked it enough to try it again, but not immediately.

6. Really, though, the big winner this month was the smoothie bowl, especially now that we have a fabulous (refurbished) Vitamix to do our bidding.