Well, we have finally completed this Achievement, and more than a full month in advance! When we originally began this, the goal was for one recipe every two weeks. And here it is, the last week of November, and we’ve already gotten all 26!
We made the walnut and rosemary oven-fried chicken, with a side dish of a lightened fettuccine alfredo pasta for dinner.
What was so great about this chicken was that it tasted and crunched like a fried chicken fast food meal would, but it was so much lower in calories. I really loved the flavor. And while the fettuccine alfredo was not perhaps as creamy as a traditional one (owing likely to the switch of low fat cream cheese for heavy cream), the flavor was spot-on. Additionally, the meal was pretty fast, even preparing two dishes at once.
We celebrated the completion of this Achievement with a nice bottle of Alapay Cellars Reserve chardonnay. (Just a side note: if you live in an area that they can ship to and you do not order a bottle of their wine, you are truly missing out. This is the wine cellar that we were members of when we lived on the West Coast, and they are truly one of the best in California! We can’t wait to return in February to try out their latest wines.)
All in all, we have experienced so many delicious new foods this year that I think we’ll try a repeat on this Achievement in 2011, with a new batch of recipes. It is such a relief to find wonderful food that’s actually good for you, too!