2026: The Year I Will Be Making Many Recipes from NYT Cooking

So, this is the new year...and what have I done?

I defrosted the freezer early December last year then prepped a couple of dishes: feta and sweet potato enchiladas and a chickpea curry from recipe tin eats. Great! Actually, no. The husband had been dealing with some stomach pain/acid reflux for a while though we couldn't figure out what was triggering it specifically. Off to the doctors we went and he was diagnosed with an ulcer (need ultrasound to pinpoint it but sounds like an intestinal one...) and sent off with some medication and strict order to give up carbonated sugary drinks. 

Now, it's no secret that our neurodivergent household loves its fizzy trash water and I decided to also give it up in solidarity but I tapered while my husband quit cold so we didn't have to throw out what we had in house. Withdrawal was a bit rough for each of us but I'm glad to have done it. Even when buying lidl's own brand, we were spending nearly ten pounds a fortnight on it and honestly, there's better stuff to spend that money on. We're always working towards a mindset of quality over quantity and this mission fit that aim.

As husband worked through the medication, we pinpointed that oily/fatty foods and spicy foods where bothering him so we're had to cut back on that...now, what did I spend time just before Xmas doing? Filling the bloody freezer with spicy food. Sigh.  

As to the post title, for Xmas I treated myself to a subscription to NYT Cooking which was heavily discounted to nine pounds (which I've kinda paid for by giving up coke zero! Hurrah!) and so far there hasn't been a bad recipe in the bunch. The slow cooker chilli with beer has been very adaptable to making it a bit milder but still flavourful and the sheet pan mushroom parma is also highly recommended. 

Would I pay full price for the subscription? Hmm. For nine pounds it is a bargain and not such a loss if I end up not cooking regularly from it but at full price? I think I would have to be making a few new recipes a month from it to justify it. As I've bought this subscription, I've banned myself from buying any foodie/cooking magazines so we'll see how it goes. 

Today I had the energy for some baking so made the biscotti recipe from Budget Bytes which turned out okay. It lacked some of the steps/instructions I'd expect from a biscotti recipe and it's definitely a more American take on it. It took a while longer in my oven and I still ended up leaving them to dry out a bit more in the cooling oven. I added 1/3 cup each of sliced almonds and dark chocolate chips. Next time I'll probably try the King Arthur biscotti recipe which has some neat tips and tricks for getting a better result. That said, the budget bytes one is a good pantry basics recipe. 

Hopefully this week I'll have enough energy to make some marmalade - cheating a bit by using Ma Made as the base - but making preserves was such a fun past-time for me before fibromyalgia became undeniable so if this helps me return to it, I'm happy. I'm going to fancy it up some with a splash of our wedding whisky and give some jars to the people who were there...a little under a year ago, it feels much longer!

 

Baking As Self Care

Is there anything nicer than warm, fresh from the oven, homemade cake? I'm not sure. Even a simple vanilla scented cake that has been baked in a domestic kitchen beats a mass made cream bun from a chain bakery. My two favourite baking books are Snacking Cakes by Yossy Arefi (found here) and the River Cottage: Cakes book by Pam of Pam the Jam fame. I haven't baked much this year apart from the epic muffin making session a little while ago and that seems quite strange considering me and PB like our sweets. So I made the Spiced Honey Cake from Snacking Cakes today which I topped with the optional flaked almonds (an addition that may well be a necessity going forward with this recipe) and substituted yogurt for the buttermilk...it just isn't a real thing here, unfortunately. 

What I enjoy most about Snacking Cakes is that they're mainly one bowl, simple ingredients, basic process recipes that taste great, much better than you'd expect for the low effort and as I'm going through a severe spoon budget reduction right now, it's nice to feel that warm sense of having done something that will lift the spirits of yourself and the people you love. 

With that in mind, I flicked through my copy of Yossy Arefi's follow up: Snacking Bakes which brings cookies, bars, brownies and blondies into the mix. I think the Date and Pistachio Coffee Cake Bars are up next for baking - I found a bag of pistachios and some dried dates that need using in the baking cupboard - which seem perfect for the chilly, rainy weather we're having. 

When I'm not resting/flaring, I've been crocheting hats and things to send to Ukraine and reading cozy stories that seem to mainly involve animals in human clothing being very humanlike. Hopefully more cooking will be happening soon - a cabbage in the fridge seems to be suggesting it is destined to become swedish brown cabbage... 

 

 

Urgh Season.

While I love autumn, it definitely has a huge drawback: the start of urgh season. My immune system isn't what it should be, I hate being sick with a burning passion and I seem to catch everything no matter what I do. Urgh! 

The only thing to do is just to ride along with it: hydrate, rest and nourish myself the best I can. Unfortunately PB has also succumbed to whatever germ cloud is floating around so the energy struggle was real over the past few days. 

Luckily there was some leftovers from the previous post prep in the freezer (sticky toffee oats and salmon pate) and since we've both been poorly sick, we're in the soup zone! My plan was to make the Vegan Cauliflower Soup from the I Love My Instant Pot: Anti Inflammatory Diet Recipe Book. 

Intially it turned out a little thin in consistency for me (although I admit I like my soups thick...more a puree really) so I added a tin of new potatoes (judge if you wanna but they are useful to have on hand) and that sorted it. I definitely want to try some other recipes from this book now.

Dinner on Monday was something different, we'd found a couple of packages of dry udon noodles so I set to finding something easy and pantry friendly to use them and found Japanese Style Tuna Noodles recommended on a reddit thread and I had most of the ingredients so I set to work:

Japanese Style Tuna Noodles
Sam Sifton, New York Times Cooking, with modifications.

Ingredients:

Dressing:
1 tablespoon canola oil (based on advice from aforementioned reddit thread, this is half of the original amount. I also used the last dregs from a bottle of olive oil instead) 
2 tablespoons sesame oil (I used pure but I'm sure toasted would be okay too)
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon mirin
1 tablespoon soy sauce (again, not specified but I used light soy sauce. I think dark would be too overpowering here)
1 teaspoon sweet miso (I had no miso on hand so I used some vegan fish sauce instead, a scant teaspoon)

Everything Else:
250g udon noodles (this is the size of the packets I have)
2 tins of tuna in spring water, drained and fluffed up
1/4 cup wakame seaweed - this I didn't have on hand but you could substitute with nori sheets or edamame, probably? I didn't have those either!

To Serve:
Sliced spring onions
Furikake and/or toasted sesame seeds (you can toast your own, of course)

Prep: 
1. Soak the wakame if using according to package instructions, otherwise prepare nori by shredding into fine ribbons and/or preparing the edamame. 
2. Boil noodles, again according to package instructions.
3. Whisk all dressing ingredients together and put aside. 
4. Drain tuna, put in bowl and place aside. 
5. Drain noodles well then put into bowl with tuna and add the veggie component if you've added one. Pour dressing over and toss to coat. You can do a fancier presentation by just dressing the noodles and veggies then putting the tuna on top but this is nothing fancy so I didn't. 
6. Serve with toppings of choice.  

As the weights of my pantry ingredients (noodles and tuna) were slightly more than those specified in the original recipe, I may increase the dressing recipe by half next time although it was a lovely light dinner that came together quickly and felt very different for a pantry/quick meal. 

It's horribly inauthentic but you could use linguine pasta instead of udon noodles as I know not everyone has the option of using them due to cost/location reasons. I think we bought these as an aldi special buy some time ago (?). I ate some leftovers cold the day after and can confirm the flavours hold up well.

We also had some orange juice to use up as PB was finding it was causing a lot of acid reflux for him so I scaled up this Orange Juice Muffins with Greek Yogurt and made thirty six (!) muffins which are now in the freezer ready for (many!) mornings ahead. Greek yogurt is an absolute game-changer for muffins which I always had a touch of difficulty in getting them light and fluffy but any muffin recipe that uses greek yogurt is always a winner for me. 

Today was a bit different, PB took a day off work and we went to see the Wallace and Gromit exhibition at The Harris which has finally reopened. Original models, sets, storyboards and concept art (A Grand Day Out was originally going to be very different...) and it was a brilliant opportunity to look at objects crafted by multi-disciplined artists with such a staggering level of detail. Nick Park has done much for the city of Preston and this exhibition is another feather in that cap. 

Back to food! We decided to have lunch at Kimji which is a Korean place we've been to a couple of times. We were going to try the bentos on the lunch menu but we were waylaid by the specials menu (every time we go, this happens!) which was Halloween themed so we ordered a charcoal bao buns to share and a portion of Jjajangbap each but unfortunately they had no Jjajangbap left but they did very kindly let us preview the next special - chicken katsu - which was very nice. 

Spicier than you'd expect from a katsu but that actually made the dish for me since we have mild katsu at home fairly often. The charcoal bao buns were delicious - I preferred the texture of these and I'm not sure if it was due to the charcoal content changing the recipe or not...Kimji never disappoints. We're always too full to attempt a dessert even though everytime I go there that's what I want to try the most!

Afterwards, we wandered down to an Asian supermarket for some supplies (sesame oil, gochujang, miso, wakame, etc) and perhaps they are between deliveries but it didn't seem to have quite the usual level of choice in stock. Prices have gone up a fair bit too - recently an Asian supermarket has opened up much closer to us and it's much cheaper there but they're still building their stock range so we'll see how it develops there. Then across the road to Moon Moon, a Chinese bakery, where we bought a slice of Japanese chiffon cheesecake and a slice of pandan + mango swiss roll for later on.  

A very tasty and fun day!