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One of my 36 goals for this year is to try three dozen new dinner recipes. So I opened a couple recipes I’d bookmarked, went shopping — and then realized when I got home that I didn’t have the main ingredient. But I have to eat, and a goal is a goal. Here is the first batch of recipes I’ve tried:

1. This “spaghetti squash lasagna with broccolini,” which I made with broccoli because I didn’t see “broccolini” at the store. I have no idea what that is and if it made a difference (yes, I could google), but I thought the meal was delicious. I could see adding a little ground beef or sausage to it, and I wonder if chopped spinach would be good. Thanks to Kimra for the recipe tip!



2. Lemon pepper pork chops were a failure: The sauce flavor was good, but they were so tough that I could barely chew them, even after cutting them into very small bites with a steak knife. Fortunately, I had halved the recipe and the pork chops were cheap, so I didn’t throw out too much food. (Served with canned green beans and non-instant long grain rice. I’m not a good cook, but I don’t have problems cooking rice, so there’s that.)



3. Roasted chicken and potatoes were easy and fool-proof! Thanks, Michaela, for the recipe! I was reminded that I’m not a fan of drumsticks  because there’s so much inedible stuff to eat around) but I’ll definitely try this again. Next time, I’ll make more of the sauce, and I think red potatoes would be a nice flavor.



4. Bacon and roasted cauliflower in one recipe?! Sign me up! This charred cauliflower carbonara was delicious, though I apparently did something slightly wrong because it was dry. Maybe because I used the pre-shredded Kraft parmesan cheese? I used the bucatini pasta that the recipe called for, learning in the process that it’s spaghetti noodles with a hole in them, but I don’t see why regular spaghetti or angel hair pasta wouldn’t work just as well. This one took awhile and I would have gone nuts from waiting around, but I talked to one of my sisters the entire time I cooked it, which was an excellent way to do things.



5. Avocado plus spaghetti squash plus cheese?! Sign me up! I found this recipe, which also includes an egg that (mostly) bakes in it. The egg kind of ruined the whole thing for me, because I don’t like runny yolks. I tried baking the other half more, but that made the top of the egg rubbery and I still had runny yolk. This similar recipe says the key to non-runny yolk is to break the egg on top of the squash, rather than making a well in the squash. That wouldn’t have worked for me, though, because my squash was already full before the egg was added. That second recipe also eliminates the cheese, which is healthier and dairy-free, but the cheesy version was already bland for me so this one would be even more so.



6. If you slather hummus on chicken breasts and then bake them, it works! Who knew?! I followed this recipe, since I liked the idea of adding some veggies to roast at the same time (though I didn’t use onion, because I never do). I used three chicken breasts instead of four, which was no big deal. I could have added more veggies, and even though I only used the juice of one lemon, I would have preferred less.

If you have any not-too-complicated recipes that you feel like sharing, I’d love suggestions!