You can see all the recipes I made as part of this project on The Why Haven’t I Made That? List

It’s officially been a year since I started Why Haven’t I Made That?, which was a project to make one Smitten Kitchen recipe every week. I tried to focus mostly on recipes that were new to me, but I didn’t want to set a bunch of rules and then feel like someone else was in charge of my kitchen. So how did it go?

In reality, I didn’t cook a Smitten Kitchen recipe every week. But I still managed to make 65 of Deb’s dishes as part of this project. In the early summer I was working ahead for a while to try and make sure I had posts to put up while I was out of town for almost half of June, so there was a stretch of weeks where I was making a point of doing two a week.

They weren’t all new-to-me recipes, in part because I wanted to share some of our favorites. And in part because there were some weeks where I just didn’t feel like making something new (or at least, I didn’t feel like it on the day we did meal planning and groceries).

For the most part I haven’t repeated anything yet, but there are several recipes from this project that I know I’ll make again:

• Slow-Simmered Lentils with Kale and Goat Cheese: A great veggie option that can take any kind of soft cheese. I think ricotta would work well, and Deb also has a similar dish with burrata on the blog.
• Baby Wedge Salad with Avocado and Pickled Onions: We really liked this, and leftovers held up surprisingly well.
• Ginger Garlic Chicken Noodle Soup: I enjoyed this a lot.
• Buffalo Chicken Cobb Salad: This is a great entree salad option, and the buffalo sauce is perfect.
• Chicken with Rice, Chorizo, and Tomatoes: The chicken and rice dishes are great, but this felt special with the chorizo. Made me think of paella.
• Green Angel Hair with Garlic Butter: This was delicious, the roasted garlic really makes it.
• Spaghetti Pangrattato with a Crispy Egg: This seems to be my go-to single-serving pasta now.
• Toasted Ricotta Gnocchi with Pistachio Pesto: This was incredible and not that hard to make.
• Corn, Bacon, and Parmesan Pasta: A very tasty summer pasta.
• Essential Raised Waffles: I think this will become our Christmas Day breakfast tradition.
• Marbled Banana Bread: I think about this all the time and need to make it again.
• Crispy Chili Garlic Butter Shrimp: We like shrimp and this gives a similar vibe to gambas al ajillo, which is one of my favorite tapas dishes.

I’m sure there are others I’ll end up making again, but these are the ones that jump out at me when I review the list. Interestingly enough, I still haven’t made the Pizza Beans or the I Want Chocolate Cake Cake, the two things that were on my mind when I dreamed up this project. I might have to throw a dinner party to rectify that.

I feel like I should wrap this post up by sharing some learnings, but I didn’t really go into this project with learning as a focus. It was interesting to notice that there are some very similar dishes on the blog and in the cookbooks, though. So if you hear about something in one of Deb’s cookbooks, poke around on the blog a bit. You might be able to turn up something similar.

I suppose the main thing I’ve learned is that if I want to cook out of a particular source, I need to make a point of doing it, not just see what happens. While I don’t see myself doing another yearlong project, I can see where I might pick a cookbook and make something from it every week for a month. And I will definitely continue sharing things here.