Have you ever lost a favorite recipe?
Seems impossible in today’s environment, doesn’t it?
But this was a favorite before the internet.
I was just getting serious about cooking…. (It was probably a recipe from Bon Appétit – my favorite cooking magazine at the time.)
We were both working long hours and I remember this was very quick and easy.
I remember that it used chicken breasts and cabbage.
I also remember that it was pink…. A very pretty pink, actually.
I made it often.
I can’t believe I never saved the recipe.
I’ve looked for it now and again but with no luck.
Fast forward to this week when I discovered the red beets in the fridge with a slightly old ‘use by’ date.
I started thinking pink.
The recipe, Chicken, Red Beets and Green Cabbage, has been updated, nutrition information added, and re-posted here: Balsamic Chicken and Red Beets.
Okay, so I failed in achieving this pretty pink color.
I made the original in the US so I would have used white cabbage, not green, and likely would have used red wine vinegar, not Balsamic.
And, frankly, I’m not certain if I would have been happy with that shade of pink….
Regardless of the color, this was seriously good.
I now have not only saved the recipe but shared it with all of you.
I’ll be making it again – and before the ‘use-by’ date has a chance to expire.
On another note I saw something very strange today when I was out slogging through the mud with the dogs.
We were walking along the edge of the field and it looked like it had been freshly plowed.
I know that’s impossible…. Not even a seriously heavy-duty farm tractor would be able to drive through these fields at the moment, let alone pull a plow through them.
There’s still standing water everywhere.
It was a puzzle.
Then, as the girls and I crested the hill, I saw something else that I hadn’t seen in weeks, maybe months….
Our shadows.
Seems I had been paying so much attention to where my feet were going, so as not to go ass-over-appetite through the mud and down the hill, I hadn’t noticed that the sun was shining.
I looked back at the field.
Sure enough… it was simply the sun shining on the furrows, creating shadows, that had made it look freshly plowed.
As I watched the sun went back behind the clouds and everything returned to normal.
But that brief moment of sunshine gave me hope that, just maybe, some day soon the rain will stop.
If it doesn’t I’m going to shave the puppies dogs.
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Let the sun shine. I have lost several recipes over the years. One is for ginat shrimp stuffed with garlic butter and chopped scallops, another for a completely boneless stuffed chicken.
That sounds delicious. Is it the pretty much the same as the lost recipe? If not, one of my friends recently lost a favourite recipe she had gotten from her mother. She spent days looking for it – tore her house apart looking. She finally gave up, completely dejected. And then her husband found it. Where? It was in her recipe box, filed in the exact spot where it was supposed to be….
(Did you check your recipe box for your lost recipe?)
We have had no rain for weeks – why can’t there just be a happy medium and you get some and we get some too. I don’t want a deluge but just enough to keep the garden alive !!
There are some recipes I remember making before the blog that are now lost. Sigh. I’m glad you refound this dish though!
Val, all we can do is try to re-create… and have fun doing it!
Elizabeth, I’ve looked everywhere – and even in my recipe boxes. I’m pretty sure I never tore it out of the magazine. Foolish woman.
manningroad, I would love to send you some rain. Last summer we went for over 8 weeks without a drop. At least this summer the water tables should be in good shape.
Jayne, the blog is a great recipe-saver LOL
Katie – I made this for dinner tonight – soooo good! I will do a recipe review with a link back to you next week. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Ina, soooo glad you liked it!