Squash Soup in Pumpkin Bowls

Day 24-Well another day, another meal cooked. Things seem to be going better in the kitchen this week, so I’m going to leave last weeks burning mess behind me. Do I have more confidence? Ah, not really. I’m just walking into the kitchen and telling myself whatever happens is not the end of the world…and take out can always be ordered! Last nights meal was exciting. Edible bowls!! I love edible bowls! It’s the small things in life that make me the happiest. I was standing in the check out line one Sunday and saw the cover of a magazine (Food Network Oct, 2010 issue), it showed pumpkins filled with some yummy goodness. So I looked closer and discovered it was butternut squash soup in the pumpkin with a slew of lovely toppings. Of course I bought the magazine and put Squash Soup in Pumpkin Bowls on the menu for this week.

I went to the Farmer’s Market to buy the squash. I purchased one butternut squash for the soup and two acorn squash for the bowls. I didn’t see baking pumpkins anywhere, but the recipe says you can use acorn too. Looking at the squash last night I knew right away that I was going to need help in the kitchen. So I recruited Anthony to make the bottoms of the acorn squash flat and to cut the tops off. He also scooped out the fibers and seeds inside them. Then he peeled, seeded, and cut the butternut squash for me too. What a doll! It’s an easy night of cooking for me, if I don’t have to cut a ton of veggies. We saved the seeds from all of the squash to plant in the garden. That’s something to look forward too!

Once you season the acorn squash with salt and sugar, you bake them at 400 degrees for about 35 minutes. Then you need to start the soup. You melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a pot, then add ½ a small onion, 1 teaspoon of salt, and thyme leaves. Cook until the onion is soft then put the butternut squash and sugar in the pot and get the squash nice and glazed. Next 5 cups of water is added and you bring it to a boil. Then you lower it to a simmer and cook until the squash is tender. Basically after that you just blend it all up (in batches) and add some heavy cream if you want to. Done. You can add a variety of different toppings. I used crumbled bacon, paprika, fried onions, and green pumpkin seeds. I served it with sourdough bread.

Final Product:

Yeah this was good. The soup seemed a bit more watery than I normally like soup, but with the addition of the edible bowls it worked nicely. You could scrape some of the bowl into your soup or onto your spoon to give the soup more texture. It was very good. I couldn’t get enough of the acorn squash, it was very yummy. This will definitely be made again for dinner and hopefully next year we will have our own butternut and acorn squash to use. Try this one! It would really be a great dish for entertaining. Everyone loves edible bowls!

Well that wasn’t too scary. Of course I had some help, but a girl can’t do EVERYTHING by herself. I’m taking a break from cooking tonight to enjoy some leftover chili and soup. I’ll be back with a new shrimp dish in a few days.

Thanks for reading! If you want any of the recipes please use the link to the left called Recipes Used for The Hesitant Cook.

Turkey Bean Chili

Day 23-Let me start out by saying YAY!! After my night of burning everything I really needed a win. We went out for dinner Friday night, so I got a break. Then Saturday I decided to make chili and invited a few people over for dinner. I’m always really nervous to invite people over for dinner if I’m cooking. As evidenced in the last post I have good reason to be worried. Something easy could turn into a complete nightmare. Since I felt pretty safe making a one pot dish, I felt okay about inviting people over for dinner. Also since I wasn’t cutting the recipe I knew I was going to have a lot of leftover chili if I didn’t have company over. Thank goodness everything worked out.

Chili is awesome. I love it. I like cooking it on the stove or in the crock pot. Using ground beef, ground turkey, or some other ground meats. One pot meals are also awesome for clean up purposes. Although at the end of the night our sink was over flowing with items that needed to be washed! One pot turned into a five. I got this recipe from a magazine cookbook called Taste of Home: Casseroles, Slow Cooker, and Soups. All of my favorite things to cook! The recipe is super easy and was a much needed break from the more involved recipes I have done recently.

The prep work included chopping an onion, green pepper, and jalapeño pepper. Also you have to open the 4 cans of stewed tomatoes and chop those up in smaller pieces too. Then you need to drain and rinse 1 can of black beans, 1 can of kidney beans, and 1 can of pinto beans. Next you sauté the onion, pepper, and 2 pounds of ground turkey. Once the turkey is no longer pink, you add all the rest of the ingredients. The three cans of beans you drained, plus a can of chili beans (not drained), the tomatoes, jalapeño, and all the spices. Then you let it simmer for however long you want. That part doesn’t have to be timed out. I was able to let it sit longer then I thought and the longer it sits the better it tastes.

I made corn bread from the Jiffy box. I decided to add the stuff that Anthony adds to the scratch cornbread he makes. So I mixed up the Jiffy with chopped red pepper, a teaspoon of Goya Sazon seasoning, and some chili powder. I used the whole red pepper and I probably only needed 1/2, but I didn’t want it to go to waste. Our guests arrived to see most of my chili and corn bread making. Then Anthony arrived home and decided that he wanted to make fried green tomatoes too! So we had quite the southern meal Saturday night. The only thing missing was the collard greens. Everything came out really well. My corn bread was a little crumbly from too many red peppers, but it was still tasty.

Final Product:

This chili will be made again, most likely in a smaller batch. Corn bread would have been even better if it was scratch, so I’ll try that next time. The tomatoes were also really good, I don’t really know how Anthony makes then, I only know that corn meal is involved. Great food, great time!

Next up, Squash Soup served in Acorn Squash bowls. This has to go well, it’s soup!

Don't forget if you want any of the recipes from this blog, click the link on the right side of the blog titled Recipes Used for The Hesitant Cook!

Seared Pork Chops with Orange-Chipotle Glaze

Day 22-I went into the kitchen with a smile on my face. I was ready and willing to continue my cooking expedition. Last time I made pork Anthony told me that I cooked it just right, so I went into this recipe with a good attitude. Knowing all of this, I am now going to prove to you that positive thinking does not help people who can't cook.

As everyone knows whenever possible I've been trying to keep the food we eat when we cook at home healthy and nutritious. I got the recipe for Seared Pork Chops with Orange-Chipotle Glaze from Fitness Magazine. When I look back I'm assuming that I choose this recipe because of the word chipotle. I love chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Now I know never to choose a recipe based on one ingredient. Although I don't think that if I had really studied this recipe I would have foreseen disaster.

Things went well at first. I prepped everything easily enough. I mixed the marmalade, chipotle peppers, and parsley together (the recipe calls for cilantro, but with Anthony I have to use parsley instead). I seared the pork until golden brown and then the trouble began. I added the marmalade mixture to the pan and simmered it for a few minutes. Then I put the pork back into the pan, but the marmalade mixture was starting to burn. I turned the heat down lower and then the pork wouldn't cook. I can't eat pink pork, it scares me a little. So I wanted this pork to be cooked through, but with the heat so low it just wouldn't cook. Being the impatient person that I am I turned the heat back up. Only to completely burn the marmalade mixture, so I took the mixture out of the pan and left the pork to cook.

It was impossible for me to get all of the marmalade mixture out of the pan and the remnants continued to burn. It smelled like burnt marshmallows. So I transfered the pork to another skillet. The next thing I know the pork is burning! What a mess!! I took the pork off of the heat and plated it, only to realize that the marmalade mixture was now a concrete hard disaster stuck in a glass bowl. Well, there goes that. So I didn't have anything to put on the pork. This nonsense pretty much confirms to me that I am a horrible cook. How could I burn everything? And how could I have not realized that the glaze would become useless if taken off the heat?

Final Product:

Burnt Marmalade Mixture

This just looks so pathetic and horrible!

In the end the pork was overcooked. Not good. I'm not even going to try to attempt this recipe again. It would only bring this whole miserable experience to mind again and I would rather forget it. I would suggest others try this recipe, as long as you can cook. I stumbled across another blog Abbey's Kitchen, who seemed to have made this perfectly. Am I bitter? No, I just have take it as a loss and venture on.

No worries, my next time in the kitchen was much better. I even had dinner guests! More on the Turkey Bean Chili (much more my style of cooking) next time.

Ravioli with Sage-Walnut Butter and Curried Eggplant, Chickpeas and Spinach

Day 21-Have I told you recently that I can’t cook? Nothing really turns out the way it’s supposed to. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Ok, I guess I can’t say nothing turns out right, but most of it doesn’t. It’s not pretty. There has to be a better way. The better way for me would be if Anthony could cook every night or if I won the lottery and could hire a cook.

My most recent foray into cooking wasn’t the worst of the worst. It just didn’t taste like what I thought it would taste like. I made Ravioli with Sage-Walnut Butter. That sounded good to me. Of course I forgot that Anthony can’t eat most nuts without having an allergic reaction. Oops!! He is going to have to help me start picking out recipes for the week. Otherwise I end up with a bunch of stuff that he doesn’t like!

Anyway so in my mind this was perfect. We are trying not to eat red sauce, because we both get bad heartburn from it (we're old, what can I say!). Sage-walnut butter sauce sounded like a good alternative to red sauce or pesto, which is what I normally use on pasta. I did not make my own ravioli, let’s be realistic! The creating this meal description will be boring so I’m not going to bother with it, I’ll just say it went fine. For a second I thought the butter was going to burn, but I was able to save it just in the nick of time. I did burn the balsamic syrup a little bit, but not in a way that the dish was ruined.

Finished Product:

The main problem with this dish is that it was sweet. We are more of savory people when it comes to entrees. I didn’t realize that the honey would make it so sweet and then the walnuts also made the dish sweeter. So unless you are into eating sweet for dinner, this recipe just doesn’t work. Sorry Food Network Magazine. I’m not impressed. I won’t give up on you yet though. I’ve got another recipe I plan on using this weekend from the same issue, a squash soup.

Ok so I know in the beginning of this post I sounded hopeless. It wasn’t the above recipe that did me in. It’s a recipe that I made last night and will post about tomorrow. It was just a complete disaster. That put me into another funk, which I really didn’t want to have happen. I’m trying to be positive and optimistic about cooking, but even entering the kitchen with a smile on my face didn’t help last night. More on that tomorrow.

Oh yeah last weekend while Anthony was away I decided to cook a dish with eggplant, since he doesn't eat eggplant. I found the recipe for Curried Eggplant with Chickpeas and Spinach on Food & Wine, so I figured it had to be pretty tasty. Once again the cooking process went well. The only part of the recipe I struggled with was mashing the garlic into a paste. As hard as I tried using many different tools, I could not mash the garlic. Anyone know how to accomplish this? I'm not sure if not making the garlic into a paste was where I went wrong with this dish. After roasting the vegetables for 30 minutes with a garlic, curry powder, and veggie oil coating everything looked okay. Once I had everything plated (I made basmati rice and Naan bread to go with it) it still looked really good. First bite, yuck! Fail! I mostly completed the recipe the way I was supposed to and yet these vegetables had no flavor. It was the most bland thing I have ever cooked! What a disappointment! I love having vegetarian dishes when Anthony is away and had really been looking forward to the eggplant.

Final Product:

I'm really hoping with these two recipes that it was the recipe and not me that made these meals not good. Although when you see my next post, you might think it's all my fault. Until then...keep cooking!

I'll Be Back

I haven't blogged this entire week and it felt really horrible. I NEED to blog. So I'm hoping that next week, if not sooner I will be back in action. Work has been picking up since this is our busy season and because of that when I get home I don't really feel like doing much. Anthony and I have started working out together, which has been great. I needed to get back into exercising, since it really helps me feel a lot better. Even though it makes me feel great it takes time away from when I can blog. I'm pretty much down to a window of maybe an hour of blog time. Never fear though, I'm going to use that hour wisely and blog away.

I've done a little cooking during my blogging break. Nothing to brag about. In fact most of what I've cooked hasn't been very good. Even my old standby's haven't been tasting as good as they normally do. So when it comes to food I've been depressed. I predict a complete turn around next week. Let's all cross our fingers and toes (if you can manage that)!!

Braised Chicken with Coconut Milk and Curry

Day 20-Something really is wrong with me, somebody should research me. Cooking and I are just not meshing. The basics are not even possible for me. I should just stick to easy recipes with few ingredients. Once I do those well for awhile, I should then move on to more complicated recipes. After last night I’ve completely lost all confidence in myself. If I felt it was okay to just give up and move on I would, but I don’t feel comfortable giving up. Being someone who gets bored easily I give up more often then not. The minute a task gets just a bit too hard and I can’t really grasp the concept, I quit.

Now this doesn’t apply to my entire life, just to hobbies that I’ve tried out. A perfect example is knitting. I knitted a few scarves and could never master finishing them off. Someone else always had to do it for me. Since it seemed impossible, I gave up on it. Last year I decided to start a walking/jogging/running program, it worked out for a couple of weeks, but then my knees started hurting and I couldn’t run for long, so I quit. When the going gets tough, I get out. It’s not that I don’t like to work at things, I really do. But if I believe I just can’t quite reach the skill level to really do something well, then what’s the point of continuing with it. Folks, my brain is starting to feel this way about cooking.

Last night started off badly. I left work and got caught behind an accident and didn’t get home until an hour later. (My drive is normally about 10-15 minutes.) So I was in a great mood once I got home. Then I was going to cook something completely different, until I realized that one of my ingredients had gone bad. So that was out. Switching my brain over to another recipe is not the easiest thing for me. I get so focused on what I was supposed to cook, that what I end up cooking suffers for it.

Finally I decided to make Braised Chicken with Coconut Milk and Curry and serve it with Spinach Rice. I found this recipe in Reader’s Digest and the picture of the chicken with the rice looked really appetizing. I had to do some digging to find the rice recipe since it wasn’t included in the magazine. The one good thing about this recipe is I discovered a new ingredient I’ve never used it before, Sofrito. The taste was good, kind of like a tomato sauce. So I’m assuming that if you want the flavors of onion, garlic, pepper and tomato in a Latin style dish you can add this. I bet it would be a good addition to ground beef for tacos. I could use it in place of the salsa I normally mix my beef with.

The chicken dish was actually fairly easy to make. It calls for a whole chicken broken down, but obviously I wasn’t going to do that, so I bought chicken thighs. Everything else went really well, I’m not going to bother boring you with the details of how to put it all together (use the link on to the right of this post to see the recipe). The chicken smells awesome while it’s cooking. It has my favorite ingredients of coconut milk and curry, which is one of the reasons I choose to make it. Although it reminds me a bit of an Indian dish, it’s labeled as a classic Latin dish. So while my chicken was becoming tender and filled with flavor I moved onto the rice.

This recipe was a tough one for me. There were parts of it that just didn’t make any sense to me. You start the dish by heating up a ¼ cup of canola oil in a pan. Then you add long grain white rice and salt and coat the rice in the oil. Once the rice looks opaque you: “add enough cold water to cover the rice by the width of 2 fingers (about 1-inch). Bring to a rapid boil, and boil-without stirring!-until the water level reaches the level of the rice. Stir the rice once and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook 20 minutes.” This is where things went very wrong. I didn’t understand the 2 fingers equal an inch logic. So I poured in what I thought was an inch of water. Then I waited until the water looked like it had reached rice level, though I’m still not completely clear on what that means. Next I stirred it and threw the cover on. 20 minutes later, the rice wasn’t cooked at all! AT ALL!! I have no idea what really went wrong. All I know is that I wasted 4 cups of rice!! I made 4 cups in the hopes of bringing the leftovers to work. HA! I did manage to cook the spinach correctly so I still had that to work with. So Anthony suggested cooking up some instant rice and throwing the spinach in that with olive oil and butter. So I did and it worked out fine.

Final Product:

Just because this dinner was saved in the end, does not mean I am happy about it. I’m super annoyed about the rice. Did I not use enough water? Well, who would know with the crazy finger instructions?! Grrr Argh! The chicken was tasty. I would totally make it again, but forget about that rice. I would rather just cook up some basmati rice with this chicken dish. I would still add the spinach to the rice, because that was a nice addition. Anthony really liked this meal even with the instant rice and asked me why I don't make this more often. That's a good sign. Sorry there are not more pictures, but these two things kept me pretty busy and I couldn’t be bothered with the camera.

I’m supposed to be cooking again tonight, but I might retire the duties to Anthony. I feel so defeated. I need to work my way back into the cooking life slowly. Oh and here is a picture of the Black Bean Lasagna from the other night. It was not all the amazing and I think I'll just stick to the classic lasagna that I make well.

The Joy of... Not Cooking

I’m not sure what I was doing when I last left you all. The one thing I do remember is I wasn’t very happy about cooking. Nothing has changed. While in the kitchen I’m still the most irritable and ill tempered monster lately. Someone please tell me what’s happening to me. In a time not that long ago, I was really enjoying cooking. Now you pretty much have to drag me into the kitchen and hold a gun to my head in order to get me to cook. I really haven’t been doing much cooking since I last left you, which is why I left you.

I made American BBQ Tacos last week. The prep of cutting all the veggies took forever and really got old fast. Then my re-fried beans turned out to be not very good. So that really made me mad. The tacos tasted fine. I could see making them again, plus they a vegetarian which means they are good for you (in my world). At least there was that. Here’s the final product:

This weekend Anthony picked our green tomatoes (we only got two red ones this year) and decided to pickle them like he did last year. Pickled green tomatoes are very nice. I love them! Garlic, dill, onion…yum! Probably in a month or two we will try them. I remember what they tasted like last year and it’s making my mouth water. Also I just love the crunch you get from pickled products.

That same day Anthony made Fried Green Tomato BLT’s. I could eat one of those every day, they were scrumptious. I don’t think he has an actual recipe, but I recently saw this one in Everyday with Rachael Ray. That’s where we got the idea. Green tomatoes might just be better then red tomatoes in my humble opinion. Pickled and fried wins hand down over limp and thrown in a salad. The only good thing about tomatoes, besides ketchup is tomato sauce. Sometimes I can even do without that and will settle for a pesto. So really green tomatoes are better because I said they are.

Last night I worked up some energy and nerve. I entered the kitchen. I should have just turned around and walked right out. My timing was horrendous. I thought I was going to be able to start a Black Bean Lasagna at 6:50 and have it ready and on the table by 8:00. Not! Just call me a loser. It took so long, and I missed the step where the sauce had to simmer for 15 minutes when originally looking at the recipe. So I miscalculated. 7:30 rolled around and Anthony came home. First thing out of my mouth was order us some take out, because this baby (still not in the oven!) will not be done until around 9:00! He did order us white pizza and wings from Mark’s. (Ugh not my favorite, the cheese was burnt! Why can’t Rochester just get it right already?! It’s pizza not Risotto!) The lasagna was finally finished sometime after 8:30. Now it’s waiting for me to reheat it tonight. The good news is I don’t have to cook! No pictures of it yet, but I’ll snap one tonight.

Grilled Salmon Bacon & Feta Packets with Kale Chips

Day 20-I hate admitting this, but my kitchen anxiety is back. Let’s try not to confuse the kitchen anxiety with the kitchen depression. Kitchen anxiety manifested itself again last night in the form of fear, lack of confidence, and feeling very overwhelmed. I had to cook 3 separate things last night, salmon, kale chips, and Rice-a-Roni. The minute I realized I had to cook 3 separate things all at once (even one as easy as Rice-a-Roni), I flipped out. Seriously there was a moment there where I thought I was going to have a complete meltdown. I was annoying myself, so I have no idea how Anthony tolerated me. I took a few deep breathes and berated myself a little before I started to cook. Tonight’s meal is Grilled Salmon, Bacon& Feta Packets and Kale Chips. The salmon is from an issue of EveryDay with Rachel Ray, it’s a 5 ingredient recipe.

I started with the kale chips. I have become very fascinated by these things. They have been featured on everyone’s blog except for mine. That’s why I had to try them out. I’ve used kale in a few recipes before and use to feed it to my rabbit. Kale is great for you and everyone should add it to their diet, as long as you can handle the bitter taste of it. The first thing you need to do is rinse the kale and tear it into chip sized pieces. Then you need to dry it, I used a salad spinner and I still couldn’t get it completely dry. Then you put it in a large bowl, sprinkle olive oil on it and massage the oil in the leaves. Then you make a spice mix of whatever you want. I used salt, garlic powder, and smoked paprika. You sprinkle the kale with the spice mixture and toss. Next put the kale in a single layer on a foil lined baking sheet. I had to do two batches. Your oven should be set to 350 degrees and you leave the kale in there for about 12 minutes or until it’s crispy.

Next I started the Rice-a-Roni, I was trying my best to time everything. The box says that this takes about 22 minutes to cook, plus time for boiling and sautéing. I figured if I start this while the first batch of kale is cooking that should work out okay. The first batch of kale finished and I prepped the next tray of kale. I needed some cooked and crumbled bacon (for the salmon) so I threw two pieces in the microwave. Then I got the salmon together. Take a square of foil and place the salmon on it. On top of each salmon fillet put 2 tablespoons of ranch dressing. Then you add the crumbled bacon, feta cheese and pepper to the top of the salmon. Fold the sides of the foil up and leave the top open. This recipe calls for putting the foil packets on the grill, but since the oven was already on and in use Anthony suggested I put it in there. So I popped the salmon and the kale chips in the oven with 10 minutes left on the timer for the Rice-a-Roni.

Things seemed to be going well, but after the 10 minutes were up, nothing was finished. The Rice-a-Roni was watery, the salmon was raw, and I knew the kale still needed a few minutes. After 2 more minutes I pulled the kale out. I raised the temperature to 400 degrees for the salmon. The Rice-a-Roni looked better so I turned the heat off of that. Anthony and I checked the salmon after a few minutes and it still wasn’t done, so we left it in about 5 minutes more. Finally dinner was ready and it really wasn’t as stressful as I thought it was going to be. I need to realize nothing bad is going to happen if not everything finishes at the same time.

Final Product:

Okay now I know why people rave about kale chips all the time. They are addictive! We almost ate the whole bowl! The mixture I made was way too salty, but since the kale chips are as addictive as regular chips we couldn’t stop eating them. Next time I think I’m going to do a cumin and curry mixture for them. I’m already planning on making another batch this weekend. Love them! Anthony has made the salmon recipe before on the grill. He said he has no idea why I had problems cooking it in the oven. Overall the taste was the same. Anthony said it could have used more bacon. But of course he would say that! One thing that really annoyed me (this is another Wegman’s rant) was that we both found some bones in the fish. That has never happened before and it confirms in my mind that Wegman’s is slipping.

I’m going to do some deep breathing exercises this afternoon at work. So that when I get home I don’t get another bout of kitchen anxiety. I hate feeling useless and overwhelmed! Next up BBQ Tacos!

Cooking quote of the day:

Cooking Rule... If at first you don't succeed, order pizza.
Anonymous