Weekend Cooking

Weekend cooking is much less rushed than weeknight cooking in our house. I decided to cook Saturday and Sunday. This doesn’t normally happen, because I would rather go taste delicious food elsewhere on the weekend rather than cook. Alas Anthony had his last two days of clinical so there was no time to go out for dinner. Since we had to stay in, I took on a challenge that I have been meaning to face for awhile now. That challenge was risotto. I’ve never cooked it before, because I’ve heard it’s hard to get it just right. I am not one to try anything hard in the kitchen. I like easy, fast, nothing too terrible can go wrong kind of recipes but the challenge was ON!


I have a Rachael Ray cookbook that only has vegetarian recipes in it and I found a risotto recipe in there. She also had a few variations of it and the one I chose to use was adding asparagus to the risotto. The recipe added a step I didn’t know you should do when making risotto and that is putting the broth in a separate pot on the stove and letting it simmer. That brings me to my next point about risotto, I had to use 4 separate pans/pots for this recipe. One for the broth, one to steam the asparagus, one to sauté the asparagus, and one for the rice! That would never work for a weeknight, so this should only be made when you have a lot of time to clean all the dishes! I believe this is a very traditional risotto recipe, you sauté onion in olive oil and butter. Then you add the Arborio rice and sauté for a few minutes. We added some wine once the rice was sautéed, it was not in the recipe but Anthony said it’s normally in risotto. Now we are at the point where you start adding the broth, start with a cup, keep stirring the rice and wait for the rice to soak the broth up.   

The recipe says to do this until half of the broth is used (3 cups), than taste the rice and if it needs more broth add it in gradually because you don’t want to overcook the rice. Overcook the rice? Is that possible? I used all of the broth and the rice was still a little bit crunchy. There wasn’t any broth left so I just had to call it quits. I stirred in the now sautéed (with garlic) asparagus and the parmigiano reggiano.

Final Product:

You know what? It really wasn’t all that bad for a first effort. I assumed it would be inedible. The flavor was good; it was just a bit crunchy. My idea for next time is to sauté the rice (before broth is added) for a little bit longer and to heat up more broth. This rice needs a lot of liquid! Those are my tips and I hope you will try to make risotto. It’s really nowhere near as hard and time consuming as people always say it is. You just have to have a little patience. I’m not known for my patience in any situation, but I managed to overcome that while making this risotto.


The other meal I cooked this weekend was, Tuscan Salmon with Rosemary Orzo. Not nearly as difficult and it’s pretty healthy. Once again I have a Wegman’s complaint. Don’t hate on me! Sometimes to make things easier I buy the frozen salmon club pack. There is a disclaimer if you follow the link that states: Although We Have Made Our Best Efforts to Remove All Bones, it is Possible That on Rare Occasions Small Bones May be Found. Would a rare occasion be at least 2-3 bones in every single piece that I serve? We find bones (okay it’s almost always in Anthony’s piece) every time we eat these frozen salmon fillets. That would not be a rare occasion since we eat salmon usually once a week. Wegman’s, you might need tighter quality control!!


Enough complaining…back to the cooking! There isn’t a ton of prep to be done, chopping an onion, cutting cherry tomatoes in half, slicing kalamata olives, chopping rosemary, basil, and parsley. Ok maybe there is a bit of prep to be done, but it was fast! Cook the orzo according to the package and sauté some onion and rosemary. Add the onion and rosemary to the orzo once it’s been strained. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and basil on the salmon, cook for 5 minutes each side or until done (and hopefully you will know when that is!). Take that out and cook up the vegetables (garlic, onion, tomato, and olives), this takes maybe a total of 8 minutes.

After that you take it off the heat and stir in the parsley and basil. Serve the salmon on the orzo and top with the veggie mixture.

Final Product:

Well my first mistake was forgetting to buy basil, so I used dried and that was a fine solution. The other problem I had (I always have this problem when cooking fish) was undercooking the salmon. I had it on much longer than 5 minutes a side, because they didn’t look completely cooked. Finally the salmon started burning so I took it out. Once we got to the table with the salmon, part of my fillet was undercooked. Yes, I know you can eat undercooked salmon (and I do with sushi all the time!), but as a fillet it freaks me out a little. So I just ate around it; it wasn’t a huge piece that was undercooked. This was a very good meal, minus the undercooked salmon. It tastes good and it's healthy. Try it out!


I’m proud of myself for staying in and cooking this weekend. It doesn’t happen often, but I feel healthier for it and also saved money! Since the weekend we haven’t had anything spectacular for dinner: egg salad sandwiches Monday night (had to use up some of the Easter eggs I dyed) and black bean and cheese quesadillas last night. I have been doing really well with not eating meat of any kind this week.  That will be turning around the next few nights. Tonight we will be having pork roll sandwiches for dinner (yes I will be posting pictures since they now have the actual rolls and not just the slices at Wegman’s) and Thursday night we are going to Brewtopia (a monthly beer tasting event) at Rohrbach’s. I will be making a vegetable coconut curry that I will share with you this weekend. Can’t wait, it sounds wonderful!

Ravioli and Escarole Lasagna

I’ve been thinking more and more about cutting red meat from my diet. It really won’t affect me all that much. Looking at this week so far, I haven’t had red meat. The last time I had red meat was last Wednesday when we ate tacos. Of course considering how little I eat red meat (remember I think steak tastes like liver, so I avoid that almost always!), it probably doesn’t matter whether I eat the occasional bit of ground beef. Pork would be harder for me to give up. I love pork sausage, pork roll, bacon, ham steak, pulled pork, and the Carnitas at Chipotle. This would be a major sacrifice and I just don’t think I could do it. Have any of you cut things out of your diets (for non health reasons) that you thought you couldn’t give up, but you made it through? BTW I’m seriously not cutting out pork. Don’t even ask me about it!



Ah, dinner. I had been feeling sick during the day yesterday and I was very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner. Less concerned about my food intake and more concerned that I wouldn’t have a blog post for you all. (See how much I love all of you!) Luckily my sickness turned and I was starving. I wanted to make something interesting, but easy for everyone. I’m still on my lazy kick. Don’t judge me too harshly!  The only way I can continue cooking most every day is if I am allowed lazy weeks.  So, Ravioli and Escarole Lasagna (from Everyday with Rachel Ray) was what was for dinner last night. There are times when it’s just easier to substitute ingredients rather than waste what you already have. I had spinach left over from the lentil soup, so I used that instead of escarole. (Both leafy greens, what’s the difference!) You are probably thinking, how in the world is lasagna for the lazy cook? This lasagna is perfect for the lazy cook! It’s only 5 ingredients and those are ravioli, escarole (spinach), 1 24 oz jar of red sauce, Italian sausage, and mozzarella cheese.


All you do is take the sausage out of the casing and cook it over medium heat (crumbling it as you cook) , until it’s no longer pink. Take it out of the pan (I drained the grease out of the pan, it’s not required) and then put the escarole/spinach in with some salt and pepper. Cook that until it’s wilted. Take the jar of red sauce and spread it in the bottom of a casserole dish, layer the ravioli next (I used the refrigerator kind), then sausage, escarole/spinach and the cheese on top. I’m pretty sure I didn’t use as much cheese as suggested (16 oz) that just seems like way too much even for a cheese lover. You pop that in the oven at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, let it cool for about 5 minutes and there’s your dinner!

Final Proguct:

This was good. It could have been better. When I was eating it I wasn’t sure what I didn’t like about it, if it was the jarred sauce (which I don’t use often) or the sausage. Anthony told me it was the sausage, there was just too much of it. I used 4 links, which was a little over a pound. I didn’t want to waste any. Think I might only use 3 links next time and freeze the extra one. This meal would be a good addition to a weeknight menu, as long as you used less sausage. This will also make for good leftovers.


Tonight I won’t be cooking. We are going to The Owl House. Figure I might as well review the food we have on Facebook tomorrow. It’s a pretty cool place. This weekend I’m really planning on challenging myself by making risotto with asparagus. To say I’m nervous would be an understatement. After work today I might actually run to Wegmans and get a frozen pizza just in case!

2 Easy Lazy Meals

A Facebook page?! Really?!  Who do you think you are?! This is what I was thinking while creating the Facebook page for The Hesitant Cook. I shook off my doubt and my feelings of being an egotistical maniac. Everyone has a Facebook page especially if they have something they are trying to promote or share with a ton of people. And we all know everyone has a Facebook profile. If you want people to do something you put it on Facebook. Facebook is the new way to do EVERYTHING! Okay now I truly feel better about myself and my Facebook page.



I haven’t been overly adventurous in the kitchen this week. The phrase “back to the basics” keeps popping up in my head. That’s probably due to the fact that my last few meals haven’t turned out very good. So this week I made a Curried Lentil Soup in the Crockpot and Pulled Chicken Sliders with Coleslaw. When you see what these recipes consist of you are going to think I’m being very lazy, but they actually both turned out really good! I don’t feel bad about my laziness at all. Except I was so lazy I forgot to take pictures!! I’m so sad about this.


I used a good old trusty Betty Crocker recipe for the Curried Lentil Soup. Before you tell me that this is more of a wintery dish, let me remind everyone that I live in Rochester, NY! Enough said. I love the Crockpot, it feels like a cooking vacation. For the soup, you combine a bag of lentils, water, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, 2 veggie bouillon cubes, curry powder, salt and 2 bay leaves. That’s it for the next 8-9 hours. I added 2 tablespoons of curry for a stronger flavor; you all know I love me some curry! About 5 minutes before you are going to serve this you mix in a can of diced tomatoes. Take the bay leaves out and serve the soup with ¼ cup of chopped spinach. The recipe also calls for some yogurt, but I didn’t bother with that. I’m not a fan of yogurt.


Thoughts…it tasted like lentils.  I know that's not a very enthralling description, but I didn’t feel like the curry was very prominent. Anthony thought there was nutmeg in it, which is strange since there wasn’t. Would I make this again? Of course, it’s a comforting soup and it seems pretty healthy.  I would just add more curry or maybe some other Indian spices. There were also leftovers which is always a good thing in a house where people don’t want to cook every night!


Next up, Pulled Chicken Sliders with Coleslaw. My mother-in-law actually sent me this recipe and I figured it was time to give it a try. I’m very glad I did. It’s super easy and fast. This meal is perfect for a weeknight or if you want to be lazy. All I had to buy was a rotisserie chicken (I love those!), a bag of coleslaw mix, and green onions. First, mix 1 cup of bbq sauce with 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar. Shred/Pull the chicken, I used the breasts and the thighs since those are the easier parts to shred. Add that to the bbq sauce mix. To prepare the coleslaw, combine mayo, green onion, dill pickle juice, cider vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Add the coleslaw mix and toss. We toasted the slider buns (Thank You Wegmans, for the slider buns!) and heated the chicken in the microwave. Then we put the chicken on the bottom buns, topped that with the coleslaw and put the roof on (the top bun). We heated up a can of baked beans to go with it (love, love, love Bush’s Grillin’ Beans) and BOOM you have dinner!


Thoughts…super yummy and super easy! I even really liked the coleslaw and I thought I didn’t like coleslaw because of the mayo, but this one was good. We had the leftovers the next day and the sliders were still great! Everyone who eats chicken should use this recipe. I know I will be making this often!


Sorry about the lack of pictures today. I promise this won’t happen again. To make up for the lack of pictures, here is a picture of the stuffed cabbage we made a few weeks ago. Delish!

Destined For Failure...

Are some recipes just destined for failure?  I believe they are.  Seems to me that if you were to write a recipe you would test it out numerous times to make sure everything you were stating was fact.  I would hate to be the cause of someones meltdown in the kitchen.  There are times though when I completly follow a recipe and the meal still turns out terribly.  That is a recipe destined for failure.  Come on recipe writers test these recipes out.  Pretend like you can't really cook and need extra special help to do it.  Make these recipes fool proof.  Yes, I know.  Nothing is fool proof in my hands, but honestly this last one wasn't my fault.

The recipe:  Soba Noodles with Shrimp, Snow Peas,and Carrots.  Healthy, easy, tasty.  Those are the three words that come to mind when I see the title of this recipe and this is food that I really want to eat and enjoy.  Everything was going smoothly.  Prepping this dish was easy enough, though I did lose a little piece of skin from my thumb while grating the ginger.  I survived that though and was still in a good mood.  In fact this night was the most calm and collected night I've had in the kitchen in a long while.  I followed all the instructions and WHAM.  Soba is way over cooked!  Honestly now that I think about it I should have paid more attention to the length of time they have you cook the noodles (7 minutes).  Once before I made soba and noticed it cooked pretty fast then too.  Even the shrimp were a little chewy, that was my fault since I only had already cooked shrimp on hand. 

Final Product:

The sauce was yummy (it has peanut butter in it so that's a given) and I would make this again, but would definitly not cook the noodles for very long.  Whoever wrote this recipe must have had some crazy soba, because I had the normal stuff and it didn't need 7 minutes. 

Lost Mojo

I cooked dinner last night and it was horrible.  Nothing was hard, I had no problem prepping the food.  It was the outcome.  I'm a big Emeril fan so when I saw a recipe for Braised Chicken Thighs with Mushrooms it sounded like something I might really enjoy.  It also has great reviews. The outcome for me was greasy sauce, undercooked chicken (that could have just been my paranoia), and the white rice I made was terrible.


Final Product:

Even if my rice had been good, I think the sauce is just way too greasy.  Anytime you cook chicken with skin on and bone in, in a sauce that already has oil and butter in it, you are going to get a mess.  I was so excited to try this recipe too.  Chicken thighs are much cheaper than chicken breasts and I need a new thigh recipe.  Sadly this one will not be sticking around.  You can try the recipe if you dare, maybe you will have a better outcome than I did and you can tell me where I went wrong.  I hate to even admit what happened to the leftovers...they were trashed.  Neither of us finished our dinner and neither of us would have wanted the leftovers.  So sad. 


The biggest problem I'm having is cooking rice.  I can cook basmati rice pretty well. Put white rice in front of me and I am sure to ruin it.  What am I doing wrong?! Does anyone have any tips?  The rice last night ended up mushy and crunchy!  How is that even possible?!  We will either only be eating basmati rice or boxed rice until I can figure out how to cook rice.

Oh and somehow I managed to move our chicken spoon rest into the flame that was cooking the rice and it cracked and broke.  I love that chicken spoon rest and now it's damaged goods.  I forgot to take a picture.  I'll take one and post it tonight.  I almost cried.  Only I could manage to break a spoon rest this way. 

My Fasting Thoughts

I was fasting in protest to the proposed budget cuts to nutritional assistance programs in the United States. I tracked my day of fasting on Facebook. Below is a recap of my status updates throughout the day on April 6, 2011.

Post 1:  It's 8:00 a.m. and I glanced over to my right where I normally stash my cereal and there isn't any there. Coffee for breakfast might be okay though. At least I'm not hungry yet.
Post 2:  Just heard the word Whopper and am suddenly very hungry.
Post 3: ‎ 10:23 and my stomach is starting to grumble. Makes me feel sad for everyone that feels this way and can't afford food to stop the grumbling.
Post 4:  I just got out of a meeting and thought "Oh good I can eat now." I forgot. Sigh.
Post 5:  Food smells all around me.
Post 6:  Huge growl coming from my stomach. Guess it likes the smell of my orange tea steeping. It will be sad when all it gets is more liquid.
Post 7:  Hmmm think I'm getting super hungry. I just felt woozy. Guess the one piece of gum I chewed didn't help me.
Post 8:  Now that I've left work expended some calories and found an I could be towed notice on my car I'm ravenous!
Post 9:  Fading fast. I might have to break down and have some chicken broth.
Post 10: Cat litter commercials even have food in them. What a great combination. Yuck!
Post 11: It's been 24 hours now. I appreciate the fact that I can feed myself whenever and whatever I like anytime. I'm riding the fast out and will eat in the morning.
Last Post this morning:  Well I had my first bite of food at 7:20 a.m. I wasn't as satisfied by it as I thought I would be. I think it's because if I really was a food insecure person I wouldn't be eating today again. Today I'll be posting on my blog today some thoughts I had while fasting yesterday.

My overall experience with the fast was actually quite good. Looking at my posts I think I was being a bit dramatic at times. I really never felt that terrible. There were a few times while I was sleeping last night that I felt nauseous, but that's about it. Since I'm not one of the many people going hungry in our county, it probably helped knowing that when I woke up today I could eat whatever I wanted. Boy did I feel guilty after I ate my bacon, egg, and cheese on a wheat bagel with hash browns. Selfish much.

Since this is a food blog let's talk about food. I only had 3 cups of tea, 3 cups of coffee, and 2 pieces of gum (couldn't give up that habit even if I wanted to!) yesterday. Why was it that if all I had was liquid I wasn't feeling very hungry? Are we hungry, or are we really just thirsty? I've read numerous articles that say that we eat when we feel hungry even though all we really need is to quench our thirst. The day before the fast I was pretty busy at work and I didn't get to eat my breakfast until around 10 a.m. (Normally I eat between 7:30-8:30 a.m.) I'm not even sure it was even necessary to eat my breakfast at that point. I think I could have done without it and just ate out of habit. I need to become a more conscious eater. Eating out of boredom is something I do a lot and was probably the hardest thing I had to overcome during the fast.

We are a food obsessed nation (almost every commercial I saw last night had some sort of food in it) and I am a food obsessed person, but with food costs getting higher and higher it's getting harder for a lot of people to afford to eat the way we all like to. I will be taking a closer look at what I purchase at the grocery store this week, because my total at the register keeps rising every week. I can't imagine how scary it must be for people not as fortunate as me. There are many people in our country who have to go to bed hungry and not know whether they will be able to eat tomorrow or even a week from now. How did our country get so out of whack? It's unbelievable. Everyone should have food to eat. It's so sad that the people in charge don't seem to understand how important food is for survival. Here's to hoping that we continue to value the nutrional assistance programs available in our country so that nobody has to go an entire day without food. Donate to your local food bank if you can!

Fasting for Hunger

Tomorrow April 6, 2011, I will be joining in the Feeding America Fast. Budget cuts have been proposed that would affect certain Hunger Programs:

Cuts to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) would mean that nearly 81,000 low-income seniors would lose monthly nutrition assistance. Cuts to programs such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP) will reduce the capacity of food banks and local agencies to distribute food in their communities at a time when demand for emergency food assistance remains at unprecedented levels. Reductions to other low-income safety net programs that help families afford housing, utilities, child care, and other basic needs will only make it harder for struggling families to put food on the table.

-From the Feeding America Blog, March 15, 2011

I encourage everyone to take time this week and think about what other Americans, who are not as fortunate as us, are experiencing daily. Even if we just skip one meal it might help us to see how important all nutrition assistance programs are! I’ve committed myself to experiencing an entire day without food, to better understand what it’s like to be hungry. Anyone that knows me understands just how difficult this will be for me. I had to fast once for 8 hours before I had a medical procedure and I thought I was going to waste away! I was even allowed a clear liquid diet prior to the eight hour fast and all I could think about was all the food that I couldn’t eat. There are many people who are fasting for a much longer time than I am. Mark Bittman who is a food journalist, completed a four day fast, read his blog here.

Do I think this one day fast will make me a better person or American? Probably not, but at least while I am hungry I will think about everyone who struggles with this issue every day and I will have a better understanding of why all of these programs are critical to millions peoples survival.