My fiance really likes green salads with fruit, so I wanted to try this one. I tried another salad with pears and feta and didn't care for the combo, so knew in advance I would change the fruit. I used iceberg and spinach (what I had); made the dressing per the recipe; used fresh sectioned oranges; no cheese. We very much enjoyed this salad. And...glazed walnuts would probably be very good in this salad; add another dimension.

Reviewed On: Nov. 13, 2009

OMG! This was sooooo good! I don't usually cook with any kind of chicken except boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but decided to try the dark chicken for a change. (BSCB can get b-o-r-i-n-g.) Well, I bought a package of chicken thighs, bone-in. Wow. I don't know if my package was any different, but I ended up trimming a lot, eventually ending up with about 25% waste (skin and fat). So, I decided to use half chicken thighs and half BSCB. The only other change (that I can recall) was that I crumbled the sausage instead of slicing. Served with garlic mashed potatoes. Delicious.

Reviewed On: Nov. 13, 2009

My fiance declared this minestrone 'better than Olive Garden's'. And I agree! What I did differently: crushed tomatoes for tomato sauce; fresh green beans; much more spinach (stemmed and chopped coarse, even tho I did use 'baby'); just two zucchini; ditalini pasta. What I will do differently next time: blanch the green beans; use one zucchini (even two was *plenty* for us); maybe another can of beans; maybe a can of whole tomatoes, broken up. I think keeping the pasta separate is key! I used the ditalini based on another reviewer's suggestion that ditalini holds up better in soups. I did make a second batch using red beans and didn't care for them much. They were smaller and mushier than the kidney beans. And one more note on the prep time: maybe I'm slow, but I spent an hour preparing the vegetables; much more than the thirty-five minutes indicated on the recipe. But, I did stem and chop the spinach and also used the fresh green beans. But the end result was well worth it!

Reviewed On: Nov. 13, 2009