A Round of Recipe Reviews

I've been too busy to spend much time developing recipes these last few weeks, and have relied on old favorites or tried some new Cooking Light recipes instead. Here are the verdicts:

• Sweet Hot Tofu: Just okay. I left out the ginger and green onions since Marc hates them and added some frozen peas instead. It was good enough to eat the leftovers for lunch the next day, but not good enough to keep the recipe.
• Peanut Butter-Banana Spirals: Pretty good. But since our standard for a repeating recipe is quite high, this one didn't make the cut either.
• Apple Muffins with Walnut Streusel: Good but not great. I love the streusel topping but not the rest of the muffin.
• Crunchy Shrimp with Toasted Couscous and Ginger-Orange Sauce: Yummy! This was Cooking Light's Grand Prize Winner in a recent contest, and with good reason. I made it without the sauce because I was missing a couple of ingredients (poor menu planning on my part), but it was delicious nonetheless. The shrimp especially was terrific.
• Apple Cinnamon Granola: So-so. I got tired of my own Yummy Granola and had been buying Trader Joe's Maple Pecan Clusters for a while, but recently decided to stop spending that $2.99 per pound on something I can make myself. This was the first recipe I tried but it was just okay - maybe because I left out the dried apples, but I hate their texture. I also found the oat mixture was on the wet side when I put it in the oven and baked it for longer than the recipe called for. I did like the Cheerios and might incorporate that into my next batch of Yummy Granola.
• Maple Almond Granola: Better but not great.
• Power Granola: Better than the first two. But again, the oat mixture was quite wet when it went into the oven. I might make this one again, but I'll add a cup of Cheerios to reduce the wetness and add more crunch.
• Spicy Orange Beef: Quite good. Marc thought there was too much orange flavor, so I'll cut down on the orange peel the next time. But yes, there will be a next time. This one was a keeper.