Pinterest Tested January Week 4

It’s the end of January and the last Pinterest Tested of the month. I’m excited to end the month with testing 9 new recipes from Pinterest, one from a magazine, and a new garlic peeling technique! I’m hoping to try even more things from Pinterest next month.

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Spinach and Cheese @Life with Garnish 

I like to try to eat at least one meatless meal a week and was excited to see this recipe linked on the Merry Monday link party from Adrian at Life with Garnish. It’s an easy recipe that uses spinach, cheese, and Bisquick.

My results & tips for this recipe:

1. I may have over salted the water I used to cook my spinach balls because they came out extremely salty. If I had a chance to do it again, I would not salt the water. There is enough salt in the cheeses that I don’t think it’s needed.
2. If you choose to salt the water, make sure you continue to add water as it evaporates during cooking or you will end up with a concentrated pot of salted water. This may have contributed to the last batch of my spinach balls being too salty to eat.
3. The balls seemed a little soggy on the outside from the water, but the insides were nice and fluffy.
4. Don’t try to make the balls bigger than a tablespoon because they almost triple in size when cooking.

Overall, my two youngest kids were okay with this dish. They ended up smashing the balls and mixing it into their pasta and sauce. The rest of the family didn’t care for it. Even though it wasn’t a hit with the entire family, I would like try this recipe again without salt in the cooking water and maybe increase the Bisquick in the mix to create a drier biscuit type ball.

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Asian Beef with Snow Peas @Allrecipes

This next recipe didn’t come from Pinterest, so I’m cheating a bit. But hey, at least it’s a new recipe, right? I found this recipe on Allrecipes website and I’m sure it’s floating around Pinterest somewhere.

My results & tips for this recipe:

1. If you like to eat rice with your meat meals, double or triple the sauce. You’ll want to use some of it on your rice 🙂
2. Add a can of water chestnuts for added crunch.
3. I added more soy sauce to make my sauce more savory than sweet. If you want a more savory sauce, when increasing the sauce, don’t add more sugar. You will need to add more cornstarch to thicken the sauce.
4. If you don’t have rice wine, you can substitute with cooking sherry.

My family LOVED this recipe. What I love is that it’s easy and almost any vegetable can be used in this recipe – I think I’ll try using broccoli the next time.

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That’s a wrap for the month of January Pinterest Tested. See you in February!