Cook for Good Free Recipes for Low-Cost, Delicious Meals

Recipes

These recipes should give you an idea of how easy it is to Cook for Good -- and of how scrumptious the food is. Make sure you've subscribed to the Cook for Good enewsletter to get more recipes every week.

Beans

Basic Beans — If you do nothing else after looking at the Cook for Good site, please start cooking a pot of dried beans every week. Dried beans are one of the great food bargains, costing about one 10th the price of canned beans. Cooked dried beans taste better than canned ones and produces wonderful broth you can use in other dishes.
Beany Gazpacho — Get the summery salad taste of traditional gazpacho but with more protein, making it a meal in a bowl — or in a thermos. It's very flexible: serve it cold or hot, stir in extra vinegar or hot sauce for the adults, and serve it with garnish or stir in chopped veggies for texture. This soup will have special appeal to dieters, since it has no added fat and yet is filling and tasty.
Black-Eyed Peas with Lemon-Walnut Sauce — Take advantage of the lemons and parsley that thrive during the winter months to make this tangy, festive sauce for black-eyed peas. This recipe uses the juice and zest of one lemon to pack citrus brightness without wasting any of fruit. Adding parsley and the lemon zest makes the sauce attractive as well as delicious.
Cuban Black Beans — These fragrant black beans are a good change from the tomato-based bean dishes. Serve them over hot rice or wrap them up in a burrito. Or remove all the bay leaves, then whirl some beans and broth in a blender or food processor to make black-bean soup.
Great Northern Bean Soup, Southern Style — Great northern bean soup only gets better when you add classic southern ingredients: sweet potatoes and collards. The soup has a festive holiday look, with snowy white beans, bright orange cubes of sweet potatoes, and streamers of dark-green collards.
Hoppin' John — A traditional dish eaten on New Year's Day in the South, made from black-eyed peas, rice, tomatoes, and green onions. You'll want to have seconds: the story is that the more black-eyed peas and greens you eat on New Year's, the more money you'll have in the coming year. I love it all winter long. Serve with collards or another green (to bring you folding money) and cornbread. Leftovers freeze beautifully.
Hummus — This rich, garlicky spread makes a main dish out of roasted vegetables. Just warm it up and use it as a gravy over roasted carrots, white and sweet potatoes, onions, and green peppers. Or use it as a dip for vegetables, a spread for toast, as as sandwich filling. It keeps for several days in the refrigerator and freezes well.
Hummus Yule Tree — The creamy chickpea spread and crunchy celery make a delicious combination. The tree shape makes it a great Christmas-time appetizer.
Red Bean Chili — Colorful and spicy, red bean chili is nearly a whole meal by itself. It's full of beans, of course, but also tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic. Since it freezes very well, keep some on hand for times when you need a quick one-bowl meal.
Rice-Cooker Stew — You don't need a whole kitchen to cook. Here's a complete meal you can make with just a rice cooker, perfect for cooking in a hotel room, dorm room, or where ever you have electricity but no other cooking facilities.
Yellow Indian Woman Beans — Beans gone gourmet! Here's a bean dish you can serve to your most upscale foodie friends with your head held high. It's also rich in food history, but still thrifty at about a dollar a serving, even topped with chopped ripe tomatoes, garlicky fresh corn, and cilantro.

Bread

Good Baking Mix — The convenience of boxed baking mixes, but better taste and more nutrition.
Good Mix Biscuits — Make these biscuits from Good Baking Mix. Just add water, stir, and drop by the spoonful onto a baking sheet. Nine minutes later, take tender, buttery biscuits hot out of the oven.
Good Whisk Bread — This recipe and its sister recipe for Whisk Sandwich Bread are my pride and joy, the results of eighteen months of research and bread making. I wanted a very nutritious bread that was fast and easy to make and didn't require any special equipment. It's a great bargain too, costing less than $1.30 a loaf using regular, good ingredients and $1.75 per loaf using top-quality organic ingredients (prices from January 2009). The taste is complex and interesting for adults while still being kid-friendly.
More-Banana Banana Bread — Use very ripe bananas for More-Banana Banana Bread, which has more fruit, less sugar, and fewer walnuts than most recipes. It also uses white whole-wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour. Toast this banana bread and top with peanut butter for breakfast or slip a piece into a lunch box for dessert. It freezes well, making it a great way to store extra bananas.

Breakfast

Breakfast Sweet Potatoes with Cinnamon-Yogurt Sauce — Have a hot baked sweet potato for breakfast with yummy cinnamon-yogurt sauce. Enjoy the vivid colors, the fragrance, the contrasts of temperature and texture, and of course the taste. Your body will thank you too.
Oatmeal Five Ways — Hot oatmeal for breakfast is a healthy, thrifty, easy way to start the day. Many people love it just boiled in water with a bit of salt or sugar. But if you too were traumatized by being forced to eat oatmeal as a child, you may find that the more strongly flavored mix-ins and toppings suggested below will help you rediscover this useful breakfast option.

Main dishes

Greek Potato Salad —Get a different taste with every bite in this summery main-dish salad. It's a great way to show off tomatoes and green beans at their peaks. Use a mix of heirloom tomatoes, large and small, if you have them.
Green Eggs Scramble — I usually make Green Eggs Scramble with Swiss chard when I'm scrambling myself, since it’s a hearty dinner you can have on the table in about 20 minutes, even if you take time to scrub and microwave white potatoes or sweet potatoes to complete the meal.
Lemon-Balm Pesto — Light and lemony, this pesto makes a perfect pasta sauce in the spring. Serve on high-protein rotini to create a main dish. Also excellent as a sandwich spread or on crackers as an appetizer. Lemon-balm pesto more delicate than the traditional basil pesto, but makes a lovely seasonal treat.
Persian Pasta Sauce — This rich tomato sauce uses chopped walnuts instead of the ground beef and adds raisins to take the edge off the walnuts, which can be a little bitter. The result reminds me of the fabulous savory-sweet dishes we used to get a Persian restaurants when we lived in the D.C. area.
Potato-Peanut Curry — Looking for a spicy, rich dish suitable for company? This is it. Yet it's fast enough to make from scratch on a weeknight. Serve over hot rice or with flat bread. It's good the next day just reheated. Or make a dynamite burrito by wrapping it up with scrambled eggs or sauteed green peppers.
Southern Summer Pesto — Here's a new twist on the classic pesto made with pine nuts or walnuts: basil with pecans. The slightly sweet, lighter taste of the pecans complements the full taste and aroma of the basil. This recipe uses more leaves and more nuts than my standard pesto recipe, making it better for your body and for your pocketbook. If you live where pecans grow but walnuts and pine nuts don't, this will also appeal to your inner locavore.
Spicy Udon Noodles — Asian flavor in a snap. This complete meal is high in protein and easy to make: you'll be finishing the sauce about the time the noodles are done.
Stoup — Want to enjoy what is nearly a free meal? Make some stoup. Stoup is stew-soup made from leftovers collected throughout the week or month plus anything that needs to be eaten before it goes bad. As needed to rev up the flavor, add tomatoes, onions, garlic, and beans.
Stuffed acorn squash — Easy enough to make for a casual lunch and fancy enough to take the place of turkey at a vegetarian or vegan Thanksgiving celebration. You'll enjoy the blend of flavors, textures, and temperatures as you scoop up squash, spicy beans, and yogurt with each bite.
Tomato Sauce with Collards and Onions — This is one of my go-to recipes all winter. The collards add body to the sauce and the sauce hides the collards from picky eaters who won't eat their greens. Serve it on high-protein pasta with a little grated cheddar cheese and some carrot sticks for a complete meal.
Vichyssoise Encore — This recipe for Vichyssoise Encore puts a thrifty twist on the classic made famous at the Ritz-Carlton. Make it after you've made a big batch of pesto, using the basil stems and parmesan rind as flavorings. Stir in some home-made yogurt and you have a luxurious, cool summer treat.

Side dishes

Asparagus Custard — This recipe gets to the heart of the Cook for Good method. Savor asparagus if you love it, but buy it in season when it tastes best and costs the least. Then squeeze every drop of goodness out of it. This thrifty recipe that uses the woody ends of asparagus that are usually thrown away to make an "asparagus tea" with the milk for the custard.
Braised Cabbage — If you grew up with boiled cabbage at home or at a school cafeteria, you'll be amazed at how tasty this rugged vegetable can be. Cabbage's mild taste lets just a little bit of butter go a long way, making this a low-fat recipe as well.
Glazed Carrots — These carrots are a snap to make. I've had people who say they hate carrots come back for seconds.
Grilled Summer Squash Two Ways — The trick to making squash a favorite summer vegetable? Grill it! The dry heat gets rid of the extra water and the smokey, grilled flavor makes squash downright interesting. Eat it hot one day and cool as a salad the next.
Nutty Rice Salad — Turn kitchen staples into a company-worthy side dish that keeps well in a lunch box too.
Pumpkin Puree from a Halloween Pumpkin — Cook your Jack-o'-Lantern into a puree good in pumpkin soup, bread, or muffins.
Pumpkin Soup — When you cook up your jack-o'-lantern, use the pumpkin puree to make Halloween Pumpkin Soup. The onion, butter, and hot pepper make a savory soup that will surprise and delight those who only think of sweetened pumpkin in pie.
Skillet Asparagus — You don't have to peel, bundle, or boil to enjoy this spring-time treat. Instead, highlight the beautiful color and fresh taste of asparagus by cooking it very quickly in a skillet as you would for an Asian stir fry. Don't waste a bite: use the woody ends of the stems to make Asparagus Custard.
Sweet-Potato Soup with Ginger and Chipotle — Beautiful, fast, delicious, thrifty, and good for you. What more could you ask of a soup? Ginger and hot sauce add zing while the swirl of yogurt makes it look like a fancy restaurant dish.
Tasty Tahini Collards — Tastes like traditional recipes but takes half the time and is better for you. Because it uses tahini instead of fatback or pork sidemeat, this recipe has no cholesterol, much less saturated fat and sodium, and more copper, manganese, calcium, and iron.
Zlaw — Use zucchini and red cabbage to make this fast summer slaw. Zlaw goes well with bean burgers. Mixing summer squash with red cabbage creates a colorful side dish. Adding mustard to the dressing adds zing.

Sauces and dressings

Bean-Broth Gravy — Don't throw that rich and tasty broth you made while cooking dried beans down the drain. Instead, make this quick gravy to serve over baked potatoes, rice, or day-old cornbread. This recipe lets you stretch a tablespoon of butter into four servings.
Oooo Mama! Gravy — Pour this savory vegetarian gravy over mashed potatoes and stuffing to bind together a Thanksgiving feast. Even the non-vegetarians will cheer you on, saying "Oooo, Mama! This is some good gravy!" The tahini and soy sauce in this gravy both have savory umami flavor, making a rich-tasting gravy that is good for you, with protein and without saturated fat.
Spicy Yogurt Sauce — This sauce is so fast and easy you'll be willing to make it on the hottest days of summer. It's one of the key sauces for the Cook for Good summer menu, transforming simple bean burritos or cucumber and tomato salad into a complex taste treat.
Yogurt — Homemade yogurt costs about 1/3 of what mass-produced yogurt costs. It is amazingly easy to make at home, once you know how, and tastes at least as good as the store-bought kind. The trick is to use the ways perfected over centuries in Turkey and India. Many modern recipes call for all sorts of unneeded extra steps and ingredients. But in fact, cleanliness, time, and gentleness are the keys to thick yogurt. Live yogurt starter and milk are the only ingredients. You don’t need to add powdered milk or gelatin as some recipes call for. Bringing the milk to a boil and cooling it slowly changes the structure of the milk so it will thicken up enough on its own.

Desserts

Chocolate Pumpkin Snack Cake — This healthy recipe uses whole-wheat flour and pumpkin puree made from a Halloween pumpkin. The result is light and tender, with a good cocoa flavor and just a faint hint of spiciness from the pumpkin. Since it's not frosted, you can tuck a piece of Chocolate Pumpkin Snack Cake into a lunch box or picnic basket as tidily as you can serve it as a dessert after dinner.
Blueberry Pie — Intense, beautiful, with a flaky exterior and a deep blue, sweet filling: blueberry pie is a country-music star of a dessert. Blueberries are the easiest fruit to prepare, just needing a quick rinse and stem check. Even when you make Sneaky-Wheat Butter Pie Crust, this blueberry pie is fast enough to bake on a weeknight. It's fabulous enough for a dinner party or family reunion, too.
Minted Cantaloupe Sorbet — Refreshing and light, minted cantaloupe sorbet sparkles as a dessert after a big meal. If you want to be fancy, use small servings as a palate cleanser between courses. It's the perfect way to use an over-ripe melon that is too soft to just cut and serve but is still good to eat.
Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies — I love these cookies. They are the first ones I ever had that tasted like food, not just entertainment. Sweet, chewy, and wonderful food, but food nonetheless. And food they are, full of whole grains from the oats and white-wheat flour and rich with healthy additions.
Peach Cobbler — This recipe is considerable lighter and more thrifty than many cobbler recipes, using about 2/3rds less sugar and about 4/5ths less butter than the original. It also replaces an egg with yogurt. This cobbler even uses more fruit! Cutting the biscuit topping into star shapes makes it pretty enough for a special meal while making it easy to serve.
Sneaky-Wheat Butter Pie Crust — This rich tasting, flaky crust uses some white whole-wheat flour in place of some of the all-purpose flour. It's another case where the healthier option is actually more delicious!
Strawberry Ice Cream — Make this strawberry ice cream and you'll feel glad to be alive. The intense strawberry flavor and gorgeous deep-pink color embody Spring itself. This healthy dessert is easy enough for a week night and fancy enough for a dinner party or special occasion. Use local berries and milk if you can to support farmers in your community.
Strawberry Shortcake — My mother-in-law makes the best strawberry shortcake I've ever had. Crushing the strawberries releases the juice and fragrance of the berries and the tender cake absorbs the liquid. It's a lovely dessert too, one you can be proud to serve on special occasions. You can make the cake, prepare the strawberry sauce, and whip the cream the day before, then assemble the cake within an hour or so of serving.
Vanilla Cake — Make this quick, tasty cake from Good Baking Mix in minutes. Put in in a lunchbag and send it off to school or work as a snack cake. Top with a little jam or with fruit and whipped cream for a fancier but still healthy dessert.