Hi everyone! This week I decided to look into sides for the chicken I’ve been usually making every week for these posts. If you saw my post from last week, you’ll know I’ve started meal planning/prepping. I found it really useful because as much as I try, I just do not enjoy cooking. So if I make many servings of food one to three times per week, I don’t have to cook as much but still am having relatively healthy meals every day. DISCLAIMER: I do very briefly talk about macronutrients, calories, and mention of relationships with food towards the end of this post, so if there is a chance that it might make you uncomfortable or possibly be triggering, reading this post might not be in your best interest.
I had some extra potatoes laying around and I wanted to see what I could do with those. I thought scalloped potatoes would be something I could make in a big dish and would last me a few days. I say “big dish” but it’s really just a recipe for a small family, but I am only cooking for one person so that lasts me 3-4 days.
Anyways, I went on google to find some recipe websites since I think I’ve been mostly finding my recipes for these posts on social media or apps. I found a website called Recipe Land and surprisingly was not mobbed by thousands of ads so I stuck around and searched for a scalloped potato recipe. I found this one called “Cheesy Scalloped Potatoes” which sounded particularly enticing. I was excited to see that it looked relatively easy and I had all of the ingredients!
What I really enjoyed about this website is that I wasn’t disoriented looking through it. Normally on these sorts of websites there are a disturbing number of pop-up ads that make it hard for me to navigate the website and I give up. On this website, there are ads but they are just along the sides of the screen so it doesn’t bother me the same way that pop-up ads do. They are also usually blog websites so you have to scroll through dozens of paragraphs to find what you’re actually looking for (sorry, food bloggers) but on this one, everything I was looking for was right at the top.
The website includes step-by-step pictures which I found really helpful! The reason I tend to use social media for recipes is due to the pictures or videos that I can follow along so I really enjoyed this feature. There was also a tool that allowed the reader to switch measurements from the metric system to the imperial system which is really handy because converting all the measurements from American sites can be really time consuming.
It also had the nutritional information beside the recipe which I really liked as I am a type one diabetic, so I have to use accurate carbohydrate tracking to know how much insulin I’ll need. I also track my macronutrient and calorie intake so the nutritional information was really helpful for me. As someone who has had unhealthy relationships with food in the past, I know this can be really triggering so I do wish that it was a little more discreet. For example, if they had a button to click that would bring up the nutritional information rather than having it as one of the first things you see. Another thing I think could be improved with this website is a built-in serving size converter. I’ve seen this tool on other websites, where you can type in how many servings you are trying to cook for, and it will change the measurements in the recipe so you aren’t over or under cooking. Here is the link to an online one, but you do have to add in all your ingredients individually.
The website has hundreds of different recipes that all look fantastic and has the option to sort and filter recipes by time, ingredients, popularity, ratings, etc. They also have tons of baking options which I actually do enjoy doing as an activity or as little “get better soon” gifts for when my boyfriend or friends get sick. I found this low-fat carrot cake recipe which looks really good, and will definitely be making for myself soon! (don't worry, I make my friends and boyfriend normal, full-fat baking haha)
Here is a little step-by-step infographic I made using Canva to share my attempt at the cheesy scalloped potatoes recipe.
For a full description, measurements, and more, go check out the recipe.
Where do you guys find your favourite recipes? I'd love to know!