Waffles and Berries, Linguine with Two Sauces

Today was day 24 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT and I made two dishes. I made some Waffles and Berries (Waffles with Two-Berry Syrup) this morning, and some Linguine with Two Sauces for dinner tonight. Here's our critique of these two dishes...

WAFFLES WITH TWO-BERRY SYRUP, tough waffles, good sauce...

The waffles themselves had really good flavor (made with white flour, whole wheat flour, flax seed, and wheat germ), but they were a bit tough. We like our waffles a little lighter and fluffier. But, the flavors were very good and we liked the taste, just not the texture.

Also, the batter was really wet. I ended up letting the batter sit for a few minutes to allow the liquid to absorb into the flours and it helped quite a bit.

The syrup, however, was really good, and really easy to make. I thought it was really watery so I let it cook down a little bit and ended up cooking it down a bit too much. I may use this syrup at our Bed and Breakfast to top my own pancakes, waffles, blintzes and crepes. it was good, and really easy.

I probably will not make this particular waffle recipe again, however, and definitely would not serve it at our B&B since the texture was tough. But I did like the flavors. If it could be variated somehow so it wasn't so tough, I'd love to make this dish again, but it needs to be lightened up a bit.

LINGUINE WITH TWO SAUCES, one of my favorites so far!

I REALLY liked this dish a lot! My hubby liked it ok, but he's not a big time creamy sauce guy, so wasn't as in love with it as I was, but he still liked it well enough to make again in the future sometime.

It was a little on the sweet side, however. I'm not sure what caused it to be sweet since there was no sugar in it. Maybe the tomatoes, maybe the 1/4 of white wine (which was supposed to be a dry white wine) was not as dry as it should have been, which may have been the case as I'm not a wine connoisseur. But, I loved it.

The combination of the creamy white sauce that the pasta was mixed in with, and the red sauce that the pasta was topped with, blended really well together. I knew it was going to be good when I smelled the sauces cooking before it was put together and baked in the oven. And then when I pulled the foil off the top after baking it the aromas were delightful. I could not wait to try it. And once I did, I was so very pleasantly surprised.

I will be making this dish again and again I think.

46 recipes down, 501 more to go (close to breaking the 500 mark!)