endeavorous adventures in cooking. (Amy)

I decided not to do a whole bunch of updates on my progress from last week's goals. Mainly because I ate stuff in mass quantities that would make Jackie Warner (and all those personal trainer guys from Biggest Loser as well as all other health nuts, worldwide) recoil from me in horror. And I have no intentions of eating healthy much next week either. And I'm not sure if I'll work out or not. And I've decided I'm okay with that, that I will own it, and set my sights on 2011 and a time of year when nothing fancy or big is happening to off-track me (I'm so easily off-trackable).

Also, I've been on the news blogs at lunch time this week. I've tried to stick to the Living and Entertainment pages, but it's hard for me not to engage my schadenfreude and have a look-see at what Tiny Tim's evil twins (the ones born with misshapen hearts, who all grew up into Scrooge, Part 2) have to say about people down on their luck. (I hope for their sakes the ghosts of Marley and all the Christmases get to them before it's too late.)

So that's that.

Now! On to funner stuff!

Let's talk cooking, shall we?

1-I'm not good at it. Example: once, I had a bridal shower/bachelorette party at my house wherein garlic buns were brought in from a restaurant. These buns came via a large pizza cardboard box, and needed to be warmed up before consumption. So, naturally, I turned my gas oven up to 350 degrees (because I think 350 is such a nice, round number, don't you? And it just feels like a good warming up food number, yes?) (I now know it's actually a good number to cook, say, salmonella-prone poultry at). And I popped those garlic buns right into my oven. In their nice large, cardboard box.

Fortunately, people who understand things like chemistry and physics and laws of nature were in attendance at this shindig. These people all sniffed the air and went, "What's burning?!" And when one of them saw smoke coming out of my oven, that nice person promptly informed me cardboard is not a smart thing to put into an oven, and certainly not at 350 degrees which is the temperature you cook a chicken at. They let me know ovens are hot places, and other than the rare parchment paper product created expressly for use in hot places, most paper products of any thickness generally like to burn and will occasionally cause major home disasters. And so thank goodness there was an amateur fire marshall at that party, huh!

2-Also, I once put a pot of water on the stove to hard boil some eggs. Ten hours later, I sniffed the air and said to myself: "What's burning?!" That's how I found out that if you leave a pot of boiling water unattended, eventually the water all boils away and then your pot begins to cook itself alive. And then you have to place this pot (after cooling, of course, and while studiously avoiding your husband's many "You are crazy. You are SOOOOO crazy!" looks for several hours) into the garbage.

3-I love watching cooking shows. I like to watch how they cut stuff up. All kinds of stuff! Just chop chop chop chop, voila! Superbly cut little pieces of onions, nicely diced tomatoes, cute little cubes of cucumber. It's magic.

I also like to watch them mix all the ingredients together. They're always so very organized, and everything's in these sweet little Crate N Barrel type containers, all ready to go. If they need 2 teaspoons of salt, they have it--right here in this super cute itsy bitsy little glass bowl someone got ready for them during pre-production time. And then they throw in some paprika in another pre-prepared cute little bowl, and some oregano, and some garlic powder, and some chives. All in cute cute CUTE little bowls.

Then they put their concoction into a really swank oven, cut to a commercial, and voila! When you come back 2 minutes, 2 seconds later? Dinner's served! And so fancy. They always cut stuff up just right and present it so nicely.

And their kitchen is still gleaming! How do they do it! How do they do it. I would like a producer from Paula Deen or Rachel Ray to come to my house every night and set up my kitchen for our daily dinner production. And then clean it all up. That would be what I will spend $50 million of my $900 million powerball lottery winnings on. (I don't play the lottery.)

4-Despite my proclivity towards burning down houses while boiling water....and cardboard, I can cook. IF I have a recipe in front of me. Here's the thing, though: for my cooking endeavor to turn out semi-edible? The recipe itself has to be semi-edible. I always know I got a good recipe when Melissa eats everything on her plate. (Once, I made this whole wheat pasta/spinach/parmesan cheese/pine nuts/olives heart healthy recipe from a magazine. She took one look at it, poked it a little, and went, "Ewwwww! Mommy! No LIKE it. No LIKE it. No EAT it.") (But if I put a candy cane on this kid's plate for dinner, she'd have that thing devoured in 3.2 seconds and would immediately inquire about seconds.)

Now Charles, (I was calling him C here, but then realized in Patresa's comment area last time I accidentally wrote his whole name, which made me stop and think. And what I thought was: eh, what the heck) Charles can COOK. Like, he can take a really (really, really) baaaad recipe, look at it, and go: "Oh, I know what this needs. It needs some of THIS, some of THAT, and a little pinch of paprika. There! Good to go!" And you swear you're eating something Emeril Lagassi himself cooked up for you personally.

I think people who can do that are magic, too. (This comment would also be directed at YOU, Tawni, Ms. I-Win-Creative-Cooking-Contests.)

5-I actually enjoy looking up recipes. I like to look for the healthiest and cheapest stuff I can find, in recipe form I think looks semi-edible. And then, if I haven't had a really long and poopy day at work, and I don't have a headache and/or my head cold is bearable, I actually enjoy the process of cooking. I like getting all the stuff out and ready to go (minus the teeny fancy bowls, sadly). I like all the chopping (without the flare or the magical results, sadly). And I like throwing it all together, and then tasting the results.

Some times this goes well, and I have to give myself a little pat on the back and say, "Amy! Look at you, Ms. Kitchen Bad Ass! You can COOK, girlfriend!" And other times this does not go well, and I have to wonder about the taste buds of whoever decided mixing THOSE particular ingredients was a good idea, and I have to wonder about where my head was at when I looked at that recipe and thought: "Yeah! Mixing those particular ingredients is a good idea!"

6-For this entry, I actually meant to cook one meal each night this past week, photograph it, and then display each meal here for scrutiny.

....Except Wednesday nasty weather came through AND I ended up going out for an impromptu holiday gathering with my most favorite co-workers....so I brought home take-out Mexican instead (%$#%$%#) (that was Jackie Warner grumbling in a frowny voice). ....And Thursday I had a head cold and just threw some spaghetti in a pot and then tossed a jar of marinara sauce on it (#@$!%$#@!) (that was Jackie grumbling and gnashing her teeth at the same time). And tonight I made turkey burger sliders which were actually not bad....but I served them with tater tots AND my head cold forgot to take a picture of them (%$^&%$##) (that was my head cold, who's simply not fun to hang out OR cook with).

So I threw in some pictures from several weeks ago, when I thought we were going to go on a 4 days off/3 days on meatless adventure as a family (it's become more like a once in a while meatless adventure...though we don't do red meat anymore). Several of these came about because I was researching and cooking up a whole bunch of vegetarian entrees for Charles and Melissa to poke at and go "No LIKE it, Mommy. No EAT it."

Here they are (I have the recipes to some still--if you want to try any out at home for yourself, I will post them in the comment section):

I actually forget what this dish was called. It was some type of whole wheat pasta with a whole bunch of cut up vegetables (I think I used tomatoes, zucchini, and squash). And then I was supposed to add lemon juice + dill sauce. I looked at 5 different grocery stores for this mysterious "dill sauce" and never found it. So I think there was a separate recipe for "dill sauce," but the recipe maker forgot to clue recipe readers in on how to make that. I put low fat alfredo sauce in it instead. It was fairly edible, and we ate it a few more times. (But minus the oil + pesto bread. SOMEbody who will not be named but has a beginning initial of a first name that rhymes with "bee" refuses to eat basil. Now, when I see basil-ful recipes, I bypass.) (I bet Mario Batalli never has this issue.)






This was one of my more successful vegetarian endeavors. Cheesy mac-n-cheese with fake burger crumbles. It was pretty good, and Melissa agreed with me by gobbling it up. But it was just too much cheese, and I'm trying to cut down on the cheese (theoretically) (and not in any kind of fully committed way until 2010 is over.)

This was a spinach quiche I made several weeks ago. Also not bad. Tips about cooking things with the term "quiche" in them: (1) put pie pan on a cookie sheet prior to entry into boiling oven, as goopy eggs will try to spill everywhere and much cursing will ensue while one attempts to avoid major skin burnage, and (2) buy a really (I stress REALLY) deep pie pan, as goopy eggs will try to spill everywhere and much cursing will ensue while one attempts not to spill goopy eggs everywhere while avoiding major skin burnage.







I made this little ditty Monday night. It's called Lemony Broccoli Pasta with Chicken . I liked it, Charles liked it, and Melissa ate everything but the broccoli. I give this a 1.5 out of 2 thumbs up for that (if somebody ever gives me a recipe with broccoli in it that she does eat, I will give that recipe a 4.0 out of 2 thumbs up AND I will include them in my last will and testament).