The Hesitant Cook

Books and Garlicky Bean Enchiladas

2011-10-19T18:26:00.000-04:00

I'm still unemployed, but I'm officially used to it now. I also know the right job will come along in due time. Besides job searching and cooking I have been reading a ton. So I'd like to talk about Goodreads. If you love to read and haven't checked out Goodreads you should. It's a social network of readers and authors. You can set up a profile and keep track of all the books you've read and all the books you want to read. People review books, there are book clubs, reading challenges, author discussions, and even a giveaway section! This year they added a section where you could set a reading goal for the year. Feeling hopeful I decided to challenge myself and commit to reading 75 books by the end of the year. Due to my recent layoff I'm actually almost there! Today I finished my 57th book (The Healer's Apprentice) and have started the 58th (The Greatest Knight). Victory should be mine by December! Once I've reached my goal, I'm going to post a list of the books I read this year on The Hesitant Cook. Those of you who are interested can check out what I read and how many stars I gave the books. I'm hoping my challenge to myself will encourage all of you to take some time and read for pleasure, it really is very relaxing.

Reading might be relaxing, but cooking can still get my blood boiling. A recent event really set me off and I was ready to throw in the towel. When the weather started to get cooler, I started craving Chicken Pot Pie. The anticipation was super high and I got as far as getting the pie over to the oven, when all of a sudden it just got to be too heavy (I blame my carpal tunnel for this, although it was probably just clumsiness) and the pie ended up face down on the floor. The insides broke through the top crust, so there was no saving it. Devastation is what I felt after that and I didn't have any more of the ingredients to start over. When this first happened I didn't want to tell anyone, because it was so embarrassing and I felt terrible about what happened. Luckily, I had a change of heart and decided to tell all of you. Now that I've told you, if something like that happens to you or has you don't have to feel so alone. Mistakes in the kitchen happen to everyone, some more than others!

Now on to a success!

Let's talk about Garlicky Bean Enchiladas. This is a recipe that I use a lot. In fact not long after making these for THC, I made them again for our supper club (the theme was garlic)! If you don't like garlic, then you might be a little crazy and you also won't like these enchiladas very much. Not a problem for me since I can eat garlic like candy (as long as it's cooked!) The only part of this recipe that is a little bit of a challenge for me is the frying of the corn tortillas. Frying and I are not compatible, but this is only mild frying so I can handle it. Another suggestion I would make is to add 3/4 cup-1 cup broth (you can use chicken or vegetable broth). According to the recipe you need 1/3 of a cup, but from my experience the beans are too dry without more broth. One of the items in this recipe I really love is the salsa verde. I can't get enough of that stuff!

Bean Mixture

fried corn tortillas, all rolled up and ready to go

and now all dressed up and to the oven they go

Finished Product

and yes that red stuff is Sriracha!

Cost: (I l already had the oil and garlic)

Veggie Oil: $2.29

Garlic: $0.50

(2) Cannellini Beans: $1.58

Broth: $0.79

Tortillas: $1.19

Salsa: $2.99

Cheese: $2.99

Total Cost: $15.12 (Note you will have extra broth, oil, and cheese to use for another recipe!)

Not as cheap as I thought it was to make these enchiladas, but there are leftovers for lunch for a few days. So it's worth it! You can also make a batch of these and freeze them before you bake for a busy night when all you have time to do is throw something in the oven.

Next up: Potato and Leek Pizza (this was super!) I can't wait to make more!

Last Few Weeks

2011-09-28T15:49:00.002-04:00

I've finally started to settle in and accept my unemployed status. It's tough being unemployed and yes I do realize that sounds ridiculous. You go through so many different emotions. At first I was sad to leave the working world. The first week felt like a stay-cation. I did as much and as little as I wanted to do and that brought me happiness. Along comes the second week and reality set in pretty quickly. There was anger (how come everyone else gets to work!), depression (I'm a sad, boring person now and I hate housework), and anxiety (am I ever going to work again?) all thrown into the mix.. And the BOREDOM! Never in my life have I ever felt this kind of cabin fever before. Now I get excited to run even the most mundane errands. Currently I am in my third week of unemployment and I've dropped the anxiety and anger this week (had an interview Monday). The depression has turned mainly just into boredom. It's finally the time to get back to blogging.

Obviously I'm still trying to stick with making cheap yet delicious dishes. Usually while I'm looking through my recipes I'll look at the ingredient list. If I have a lot of ingredients on the list and the ones I have to purchase are inexpensive that recipe will make the cut. Since I've been a bit of a slacker when it comes to blogging, I'm going to recap a few recipes I made.

Rachael Ray's Salsa Stoup and Double-Decker Baked Quesadillas: I love soup and what could be better than turning salsa into a soup! The quesadillas are cheese and scallion; the scallions really gave these more flavor then you normally get with a cheese quesadilla. I will be adding scallions, leek, or shallots to my cheese quesadillas from now on.

Total Cost: (I already had the oil, onion, garlic and omitted the cilantro and sour cream) $13.49

Mushroom and Sausage Ragu with Polenta: Yum this was a great meal! I added some sauteed kale to it because it needed more veggies and the kale was the perfect choice. Total cost: (I had the oil, onion, garlic, salt, and butter and substituted baby bella's for creminis) $11.65

Both of these recipes had enough left over for lunches the next day.

That's my update for now. Next up: Garlic and Bean Enchiladas and Sweet Potato Soup

Meatless Monday-Curried Lentils and Potatoes

2011-09-06T13:41:00.000-04:00

Hope everyone had a great weekend! I only have 3 1/2 more days of work left. Then I guess you can say that I will be a full time blogger. Due to the fact that I will be unemployed, I've decided to continue trying recipes that are budget friendly. I've also decided that anytime I do go out to eat, I will be reviewing the food and the restaurant. If my unemployment status continues for even longer than I anticipate, I might be changing things up even more. For now these are the simple changes I will be making. Nothing too drastic or different.

Okay back to the food. I tried another Mark Bittman recipe, Curried Lentils and Potatoes. That's actually called Dal, in Indian cooking. I have a new found love of lentils and could eat them daily or at least weekly. They are also fairly inexpensive ingredient to cook with and are a good source of fiber. They even have been shown to lower cholesterol and since I'm going to be eating cheaply this is very important to me. Cheap sometimes means things might be higher in fat, calories, or lacking in nutritional value, and that's why lentils are going to become an even bigger part of my diet.

Ingredients needed: 1 cup of brown lentils (I'm sure you could use any color you have on hand), 3 1/2 cups of water, coconut milk (my choice!), or stock, 1 tbsp of curry powder, 2 medium potatoes, and salt and pepper.

Cook the lentils in the liquid of your choice seasoned with the curry powder. Once you bring the liquid to a boil you bring it down to a simmer and let it cook for about 15 minutes or until the lentils have started absorbing the water. Next add the potatoes (which should be cut into chunks) and cover the pot, and cook for another 10 minutes. At this point you need to season it all a bit with some salt. Then cook for another 5 minutes until everything is tender and add some pepper. If you make some rice and pick up some Naan bread from Wegman's you have a substantial meal.

Final Product:

(sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot to take more!)

My thoughts: Easy recipe folks, put this one into your weekly rotation or at least your monthly rotation. You can't go wrong! I'm going to be making this again next week, it's perfect for the Fall and Winter months.

Okay calculation time (remember all my calculations are rough estimates):
Ingredients I already had: Lentils and Curry

Lentils/$0.75 (I just calculated for half of a bag)
2 Potatoes/$1.19
Curry/$1.50 (split one jar into 4 servings)
2 cans Coconut Milk/$2.78
Naan/$2.99
Rice/$0.20 (1 cup of rice)

Total/$8.66

After seeing the total of this meal I now know it will be used very often while I am unemployed. We each had a serving for dinner and there was still enough left for us to both have it for lunch too! I love budget meals!!

Next up: Salsa Soup with Cheese Quesadillas

Heading South

2011-08-30T13:40:00.000-04:00

When it comes to food, I'm a Southern girl at heart. There is just something about Southern food that warms you up inside and makes you feel happy. Sadly I don't come across many recipes for Southern food that are healthy enough for me to eat them every week. There are recipes where someone thought it was a good idea make a dish like fried chicken and then they go an bake it. Did you REALLY enjoy that baked "fried" chicken? Did it make you drool and crave more? I doubt it! As they say, everything in moderation! Don't try to make a dish that is amazing and totally bad for you into something healthy, it won't work. You won't be satisfied. Just suck it up and cook the unhealthy way every once in awhile. It's worth it!

So I was browsing one of my favorite food sites Serious Eats and came across a recipe for Sauteed Andouille,and Green with Grits. Just looking at the picture my stomach started to growl. I couldn't wait to go out and get the ingredients for this dish and cook it up! This recipe required three pots/pans on my stove at once (that always freaks me out!) and only some minor prep work.

In the big pot I boiled the collard greens for about 8-10 minutes. Yum, I love greens!

While they were cooking I started the grits. Bring some salted milk and water to a simmer then turn the heat down so you get a low simmer and whisk in the grits. These will cook for 20 minutes or so. Meanwhile you should drain your greens and move on to cooking the rest of the vegetables and sausage. Brown your sliced sausage for a few minutes on each side. Remove the sausage from the pan and sautee the shallots (I love these things and I love that fact that I have been using them a lot lately!) and red bell pepper in the sausage fat. My sausage didn't have a lot of fat, so I had to throw in some olive oil.

Once the peppers are cooked, add the greens and sausage to the shallot and pepper mix. Mix them together and cook until warm.

When the grits are cooked stir in some butter and cheddar cheese. That's it! Finished! So while there were a lot of pots, there wasn't really a lot of work involved (there was a lot of clean up though).

Final Product:

My thoughts: Yum, yum, yum. Comfort, comfort, comfort. This was good! I added some sriracha (hot sauce) to mine since I love everything as spicy as possible. The one ingredient that doesn't need to be included is the red bell pepper. I didn't feel like it really brought anything to the dish, but it did up the vegetable quotient which is always good. Cheesy grits are so delicious. They just melt in your mouth. This dish can work with shrimp or as a vegetarian dish too without losing it's comfort factor. You can make it even more comforting by adding some cornbread to the mix. I just made a box of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix and added some cheese and chopped jalapenos to it. If you are going to go the unhealthy route take it all the way to the top!

I was also curious how budget friendly this dish was:

Sausage/$4.79
Grits/$1.89
Collard Greens/$1.99
Shallots/$0.70
Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix/$0.55
Red Bell Pepper/$2.99
Block of Cheddar Cheese/$2.29

Total/$15.20

Nowhere near as economical as I have been lately! Although when you really think about it this was a dinner for two, plus enough left over for two lunches. $15 really is cheap when thought about it in those terms!

Next up: Mark Bittman's Lentils and Potatoes; Salsa Soup with Cheese Quesadilla's

One Dish Haddock Dinner

2011-08-23T09:15:00.000-04:00

I only have 12 more days of employment and then I can start working on the Next Great American Novel…or start begging people for a job. Both sound like viable options. Needless to say you will be seeing some creative dinner ideas from me in the near future since money will be a little tight. The great news is I will finally have time to be creative and come up with some recipes of my own. (My husband is probably reading that sentence right now and cringing.) In lieu of this upcoming event (my unemployment) I decided to spend some money and make a fish dish. The fish was not part of the Salmon Club Pack at Wegmans that I typically gravitate too because it’s inexpensive. No this was actually fresh fish from the seafood counter. I had my husband look through a seafood cookbook and pick out something he would like me to try. His pick was a one dish Haddock Bake (I can’t post a link to the recipe because it was from a cookbook (Seafood Secrets) that is not online anywhere and apparently out of stock on Amazon! But email me and I will send you the recipe!)

The ingredients you will need for this recipe: haddock, onions, mushrooms, new potatoes, dry white wine, water, bay leaf, bread crumbs, melted butter, salt, pepper, and parsley. You are going to put all of the ingredients in one buttered casserole dish. The recipe calls for 4 onions sliced. I thought four onions would be way too many, so I only sliced two onions and that was more than enough. Place the fish on top of the sliced onions and surround the fish with quartered mushrooms and sliced new potatoes. Pour one cup of white wine and one cup of water over the fish, than add a bay leaf. Next sprinkle the fish with bread crumbs and pour melted butter over everything; season with salt and pepper.

Bake this at 350 degrees. It took me an hour to get the potatoes cooked. The recipe suggests that this only takes 30-40 minutes to cook.

Final Product:

I also made Vermicelli rice pilaf from Mark Bittman's book. I didn't realise how easy it was to make rice pilaf! Yay! No more of the boxed stuff for me! All you need is butter, onion, stock, parsley, salt, pepper, and vermicelli or angel hair if you want to make it the way I did. It only takes about 30 minutes to make. The only problem I ran into was forgetting that I wanted to add the pasta and I didn't have it broken up. So I ended up breaking it up right when it needed to go in and the pasta was in all different sizes since I just broke it by hand. It still tasted really good! I encourage all of you to try it!

Final Product:

Final Plate:

My thoughts on the haddock: This was a very good recipe! Even though it took longer to cook then I was hoping it would, it turned out very well. The fish was moist, the veggies were good. I’m sure everything having a little butter on it helped with the enjoyment factor. I’m not sure why so many onions are needed, but having two in this recipe was bearable. I can’t imagine what it would have been like using four. You should try this recipe because it was tasty and everything is cooked in one dish. You can’t get much better than that!

Next Up: Andouille Sausage, Collard Greens, and Grits, sounds delicious!

And Then There Was This...

2011-08-19T09:11:00.000-04:00

You can't always walk into the kitchen and come out with something that you are proud of. I have to admit that when picking out this recipe, Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter, I assumed it was going to be good and that I wouldn't have any issues making it. Doesn't the title make it sound like a worry free night? Boil some pasta, cut some zucchini and cover it all in a butter sauce.

The first thing I had to learn how to do was use a mandoline. It's never a good idea to let me be around sharp objects. I'd already been cut once by this mandoline when washing dishes while it was in the sink. Anthony demonstrated how to use it and I was able to make a few zucchini ribbons with it, but it still made me nervous so I let him make the majority of the ribbons.

The other prep was easy enough chopping shallots and halving cherry tomatoes.

First you need to boil water for your gnocchi. I used the packaged kind you find in the pasta aisle. You could also use frozen. Then melt the butter in a pan and cook until it's just starting to brown. Next add the shallots and zucchini. After adding the zucchini ribbons they just seemed too big for the pan so I sliced them all in half. The recipe doesn't say to do this, but I couldn't see myself eating pieces of zucchini that big in pasta.

Once that is soft add the tomatoes, salt, nutmeg and pepper, cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in the Parmesan cheese (I used the shake kind from Wegman's) and parsley. Put the gnocchi in and mix until coated.

Final Product:

(Doesn't this look like a squishy mess?!)

My thoughts: While this was an easy recipe to make. The zucchini came out mushy. I like a more crisp zucchini. So everything was the same texture...soft. It really needed something in there that would make a little crunch. This is not something I plan on trying again. I just don't feel like it's that good of a recipe to start with.

This was supposed to be another budget meal. Let's see how much it cost:

Items I already had: butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper

Gnocchi/$2.79
2 Shallots/$0.41
2 Zucchini/$1.94
Cherry Tomatoes/$3.69
Parsley/$0.75 (split in half with another meal)
Parmesan Cheese/$2.89

Total/$12.47

I feel like this wasn't really a good deal. The cherry tomatoes where just too expensive. Although when you really think about $12.47 for a dinner for two (with enough leftovers for one person's lunch) is pretty damn cheap. To compare: when we go out to dinner we typically spend between $40-50 on a dinner for two. Even buying a pizza would have been more expensive. You can see the benefit of cooking at home when you think about it that way.

Next Up: One Dish Haddock and Rice Pilaf

Meatless Monday!

2011-08-17T10:34:00.000-04:00

For all those participating in Meatless Mondays, this post is for you. As I've mentioned a gazillion times I love Mexican flavors and foods. This recipe has those flavors without all the pressure of needing to know how to cook. While I wouldn't call this dish " Real Mexican", it's American Mexican and it's delicious and easy! I found the recipe for Black Bean and Tortilla Bake on Food.com (this site has a ton of recipes on it, check it out!). Just looking at this recipe I knew that I would like it since I love all the ingredients in it. The real test was whether or not Anthony would enjoy it. He isn't a huge fans of casseroles and this kind of reminds me of a casserole, just a little smaller in size.

The BBTB is super for a weeknight meal and it's meatless which makes it perfect for Meatless Monday's. (I prefer to be meatless more than one day a week, but this is a good start for those just trying out this meatless thing). I altered the recipe a bit after looking at the reviews, people had some good ideas of how to make this tastier and heartier. So in addition to the recipe get another can of black beans (2 total), 1 can of chopped green chilies, a can of diced tomatoes, and salsa. You don't need to buy a tomato if you used the diced canned tomatoes instead. The other thing you will need to do is double up on the onion, garlic, and spices since you are adding more beans to this dish.

First step is sauteing the onion, garlic, chilies, green onion, cumin, and chili powder, until the veggies are tender.

Then add the can of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce; cook for another 5 minutes or so.

Stir in your beans, cilantro (parsley in this house), salt and pepper.

You are going to want to cook this in a square baking dish make sure to coat it with some cooking spray. I also coated the bottom of the dish with salsa.

Now you build the "bake" by layering 4 corn tortillas on the bottom of the baking dish, then some cheese, and some of the bean mixture. Repeat 2 more times.

Top this with 2 tablespoons of cheese. I only bought one package of corn tortillas and there were only 10 in a pack, so I improvised and it still worked out fine. Don't for obligated to buy a bigger pack, but you will need at least 10 to make this work. The recipe says to bake covered for 20 minutes at 350 degrees and uncovered for 10 minutes. Not sure if this is necessary or not, but I followed the instructions.

Final Product:

My thoughts: It's not much to look at, but it was really good. I could eat this quite often although it's right up my ally. Of course I added some sriracha when I was eating it, because I can't get enough of that stuff. Also decided to make some rice and served it with sour cream. I wanted this meatless meal to seem filling and satisfying. Anthony told me he really liked it! Yay! Finally a casserole type dinner that isn't so horrible! We had leftovers for 2 days of lunches too! Very economical.

Okay this was supposed to be another budget meal so let's see how much it costs:

Items I already had: Garlic (minced from a jar, chili powder, cumin, 1 can black beans, salsa
Onion/$0.24
1 can Diced Tomato/$0.79
Green Onions/$0.85
1 can Tomato Sauce/$0.39
1 can Black Beans/$0.79
Parsley/$0.75
Corn Tortillas/$1.19
Cheddar Cheese (shredded)/$2.29
1 can Chilies/$1.49

Total/$8.78

Under $10 and was good for three meals for the two of us (2 lunches (4 servings) and 1 dinner (2 servings). I'd have to say that's worth it! Yes, I know if you didn't have all of the things that I had it would be more expensive, but I think that spices like chili powder and cumin should be a staple in your cabinet. Along with a jar of salsa, it has so many different uses when it comes to cooking.

Next Up: Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons and Brown Butter Parsley (this one didn't work out so well, but I don't feel defeated because of it!)

Thighs on Parade

2011-08-12T13:42:00.000-04:00

Let’s talk chicken thighs. While they might not be the healthiest cut of chicken (not too bad actually: 119 calories w/out skin, 211 with skin) they are one of the cheapest. If you cook them bone in and with the skin on, you can usually get a very flavorful piece of meat. I’ve noticed that a lot of Asian recipes call for chicken thighs. Why? I have no idea. I searched around the internet and couldn’t find a reason for it. Since this was a budget menu week the only way chicken was making the cut was if we used the thighs. The recipe I used was Korean Chicken Thighs from a blog I recently found called Dianasaur Dishes.

We were already stocked with most of the ingredients, so I only needed to buy the thighs. You can’t get much cheaper than that! Granted this might cost more for those of you who do not regularly cook with Asian ingredients. I’m going to have to make this recipe more often. It was super fast and easy. You just need to plan ahead a little. I decided to get the most out of the marinade (soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, ginger, garlic, and black pepper) and made it the night before and left the chicken to soak in it for about 24 hours. The recipe calls for 2 thighs, so I doubled the marinade ingredients for 4 thighs. Cooking this was so simple and almost relaxing since there wasn't a ton that needed to be done. Put the chicken in a skillet and sear it for a few minutes on each side, then pop it in the oven and roast it for 30 minutes or until done. That’s it folks. Dinner is served!

Final Product:

My thoughts: I already mentioned I will be making this again. The chicken tasted really good and it was nice and moist. Obviously you need to make at least one side dish to serve with this. Wanting this night to be a super easy kitchen night, I elected to make a box of Wild Mushroom and Herb Near East Couscous and just added some scallions to it when it was finished cooking. I love Near East Couscous! Yes, I took the easy way out, but why mess around with something that is already good! Quick, easy, and delicious, this was definitely a keeper.

Cost:

Chicken Thighs/$3.12 (for chicken thighs, I don’t remember how many pounds this was)

Couscous/$2.39

Total/$5.51

I’ll take that price for dinner any day. This even made enough for lunch the next day for one of us.

Next Up: Black Bean Tortilla Bake another budget friendly meal.

Updates!

2011-08-10T12:46:00.000-04:00

No post today. I ate cheaply last night. There is also some burn out happening after that not so great quiche. Not to worry though cooking will continue tonight with a new post tomorrow.

I just wanted to let you all know I posted a new poll. You can place your vote for which item you would be willing to give up for a year.

Also just a reminder check out The Hesitant Cook's Facebook page. I occasionally post some interesting recipes and articles on there, that I don't mention here.

To Make Quiche or To Not Make Quiche

2011-08-09T11:30:00.000-04:00

Spending $160 at Wegmans and another $21 at the meat market last week put me into a depression. Why is food shopping so expensive?! I don't want to cut back on anything since I'm not really buying anything that's terrible expensive or not necessary. Okay my new obsession with Ben & Jerry's isn't necessary, but have you tried Late Night Snack? It's amazing! Salty and sweet, it’s the perfect combination. I bought Clusterfluff another Ben & Jerry’s flavor this week, which is peanut butter ice cream, caramel clusters, and marshmallow swirls. It was good, but you mostly just taste the peanut butter. I was really hoping there would be a stronger marshmallow flavor to it. Sorry to have gone off on an ice cream tangent.

This week I made a conscious effort to pick out meals that were cheaper to make. Obviously we still need to get our staple weekly items (lunch meat and Chobani for Anthony and frozen waffles and granola bars for me), but I was able to lower the total this week to $86. I'm still not sure how we can spend this much money and still fit it all in their small double basket carts, but both weeks we did! Some of the meals we are eating this week will not be blog worthy, but I needed to cut costs. So we will be having pasta with my red sauce (that I made enough of to freeze awhile back) and frozen pierogies with sautéed onions. I did find four recipes to make this week that are budget friendly.

The first one that I attempted was Broccoli and Cheese Quiche. Eggs are cheap, which is why eggs have been on my menu for the last two weeks. When I walked into the kitchen Sunday night, I should have just turned around and walked out. I wasn’t in the mood to cook at all. Cooking fatigue had finally set in. Not wanting to disappoint my fans (fans…yeah right) I decided to continue on with the cooking of the quiche. My experience with quiche is nil. I’ve had it to eat at brunch a couple of times, but that is about it. My thought was it’s very similar to the frittata I made last week so what could go wrong.

The first thing that needed to happen was prebaking the pie crust for 10 minutes. I just bought the two pack of frozen crust you can get at the grocery store in the freezer section. As for the filling, you start by sautéing onion until browned, than remove onion from pan and set aside. I’m not sure what’s going on with my onion sautéing skills, but I keep burning the onion a bit. We have a gas stove and I’m having trouble judging how high is too high. Medium on our stove seems like it might be the high setting for what these recipes want. There seems to be a fine line between too high with our stove and too low. It will take me awhile to find just the right spot on the knob. Next steam the broccoli in the pan with ½ a cup of water.

(a picture of broccoli, not my best effort, but most of these pictures did not come out)

Once that is tender, take the pan off the heat and mix the onion in. Then beat together three eggs, one cup of milk, and some salt and pepper. Put the vegetables in the pie crust and then pour the egg mixture on top of the vegetables, top with cheese. Bake for about 45 minutes and there you have your quiche.

Well maybe it would have been that easy if I would have used a deep dish pie crust, although the recipe does not specify using one. I had way too much filling for the pie crust that I was using; I couldn’t even fit all of the egg mixture. Luckily I was smart enough to put the pie on a baking sheet, because there was some spillage. I also put foil along the edges of the pie crust so that it wouldn’t burn. When I took the quiche out of the oven, the edges were soggy. That might have been from filling the crust too much, but I’m really not sure why it happened.

Final Product:

My thoughts: No thanks. I’ll stick to frittata. This recipe just made me so unhappy from the start. And then the results of soggy crust and no real flavor continued my unhappiness. Anthony thought the onion was a little off putting. Maybe I just need a better quiche recipe, but I have no urge to try cooking another quiche. Unless someone can change my mind, I think this will be the first and last quiche I will ever make.

The real point of making quiche is the first place was the cost, so let’s see how I did there (this is an estimate):

Small Onion/$0.24
Broccoli Crown/$1.69
3 Eggs/$0.36
Milk-/$0.23
Cheese/$1.15
Pie Crust/$1.35

Total: $5.02 (this total is assuming you already have oil, salt, and pepper)

I also had roasted red potatoes as a side, but I didn’t have to buy them they were left over from another recipe. But this meal is easily well under $10 to make.

Next up: Korean Chicken Thighs

As always if you want any of the recipes I used please let me know and I will be happy to send them along to you!

Soup in the Summertime

2011-08-08T13:58:00.000-04:00

I'm still in the mood to cook, so far so good. No issues have happened in the kitchen this week to make me feel like giving up yet. So Saturday night with my spirits high it was time to get busy in the kitchen making soup. I rarely make soup in the summer. I think it's just something in my head that makes me think if it's hot outside than we shouldn't be eating soup. This recipe looked too good to pass up, Spiced Coconut Lentil Soup. No blender necessary which was a big plus. I hate having to pull the blender out of storage to make soup.

I minced the red onion in my food chopper (stored in the kitchen so it's not a hassle to use it) and put it in the dutch oven to saute with some coconut oil. Let's stop here for a second. I bought coconut oil during that $160 shopping trip that I made. This stuff isn't cheap, $7.49. I couldn't bring myself to taste it right out of the jar. I tried, but it reminded me of candle wax or something else equally as unappealing. So I'm not really sure if it helped with the flavor of the dish or not. I figured it was a good investment since we make a ton of curries and Asian food and we can use it in place of other oils for that. Apparently it's pretty good for your skin too and it's gives instructions on the jar for how to use it that way.

Then you add minced red chili (couldn't find a red chili so I used a hot pepper), ginger, and garlic and saute until the softened. Now the recipe says for both of these steps (onion and chili, ginger, garlic) to cover while it's cooking. I covered the onion and ended up burning it a little, so I wouldn't suggest covering it and I don't see why it's even needed.

(sorry so blurry, I'm having some camera issues)

Next rinse your red lentils (which look more orange or pinkish in color) and add them to the pan with the spices ground coriander, cumin, and paprika, mix this well. Add the coconut milk and water and crumble half of a vegetable bouillon cube into the pot; season with salt and pepper. (I did not invest in pink Himalayan, not point in my opinion.)

Cover the pan and bring it to a boil, than lower the heat so that you have a low simmer. You will need to stir the soup a bit because the lentils could stick to the bottom of the pot. Once the lentils have disintegrated (about 40 minutes), take the soup off the heat and stir in 1 lime's worth of lime juice. Do not skip this step. I tasted the soup before the lime juice and after. It's so much better with the lime juice; it just gives it this extra depth that it needed.

Final Product:

My thoughts: Super good! I loved everything about this soup. The lime juice was perfect with the coconut milk and the lentils. It was creamy and had a lot of flavor. I served it with some sour dough bread, which was perfect to dip into the soup. This recipe will be in heavy rotation.

Next up: Budget Meals. After overspending at Wegmans last week I can not afford to have the same thing happen again this week. My first budget meal I will be testing out is Broccoli and Cheese Quiche. Yes, I am on a bit of an egg kick, but eggs are soooo cheap.

The Mark Bittman Challenge

2011-08-06T11:49:00.000-04:00

I received "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman as a birthday gift this year. The book has 2,000 recipes in it. It's huge! This book has everything in it to help make you a better cook including cutting techniques and how to make a basic sauce. How to Cook Everything needs to be my bible. We all know I'm not creative in the kitchen, heck I'm not even very coordinated in the kitchen. It's a good day if I don't cut myself or almost set something on fire. I don't want my blog to become a cheesy Julie and Julia type thing, but I do plan on getting to know this book intimately and posting about it often.

Who's Mark Bittman? He is a food writer for the NY Times and he is not a chef, but he wants to help people cook. Here's a link to his column in the NY Times, The Minimalist and a link to his Blog on the Opinion Pages. I would love to be only partially as knowledgeable as this man. I figure I can start my journey by cooking as much from his book as I can. Let's get this straight right away, I will not be cooking everything in this book. Not only can I not afford to cook everything in it, I also don't like everything in it. I'm not going to sacrifice for my hobby and eat anything that makes me shake and shiver. My hope is that after cooking from this book, I will know the basics about how to make a variety of things and I will be able to make them without a recipe in the future. I'm hoping for this, I didn't say it was actually going to happen.

To get myself into tackling such a big project I decided to browse some of his recipes online and I found one that sounded easy and appealing, More Vegetable Less Egg Frittata. I've never made a frittata, in fact I rarely eat eggs, but the vegetable part made me happy. I'm always looking for meat-free recipes.

Start by sauteing sliced onion (season it with salt and pepper), once its transparent and tender you can add whatever vegetables you want to the pan. I chose a variety of mushrooms and asparagus for this frittata. Saute them until they are tender.

Beat the eggs in a bowl with some Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Pour the egg mixture on top of the vegetables in the pan. Turn the heat to low and cook until the eggs are just starting to set.

I really have no idea when an egg is set, but I'm assuming it's when it's no longer liquidy. Once it's barely set you can put it under the broiler for a few minutes to finish it off.

Finished Product:

My thoughts: Oh yeah baby! Something I finally really like. I loved that there was a ton of veggies in this and only a small amount of egg (I used 3). I left the asparagus a little crispy because I knew the rest of the dish was going to lack crunch. Of course something always has to go wrong and I made Jiffy Corn Muffins to go with this and managed to somehow put 1 cup of milk in the mix instead of a 1/3 cup. Oh well. They were still edible, they just didn't get big. This was a great recipe and I am very excited to try some of Bittman's other recipes. The Mark Bittman Challenge is on!

Next Up: Spiced Coconut Lentil Soup (Not Mark Bittman's recipe, but we all know how much I LOVE coconut so I had to try it!)

The Sloppy Joe's from my Youth

2011-08-05T11:09:00.000-04:00

I'm not so sure these ARE the sloppy joe's I remember my mom making for me when I was a child. A while back I had asked my mom if she had or remembered the recipe for the sloppy joe's she made. She told me she remembered that she got the recipe from a bottle of A1 sauce. So I went to the A1 sauce website and found their recipe for Clean and Simple Sloppy Joe's. This has to be the recipe, because I can't imagine that A1 has made up new recipes for sloppy joe's.

This was simple and fast which made me a very happy camper. First you brown the ground beef, then drain the excess fat.

Next add one chopped onion and one chopped green bell pepper, saute until softened.

Once that's done you add 3/4 cups of A1 sauce, 1/4 cup tomato paste, 1/4 cup of beef stock, and chili powder cook on medium heat for about 15 minutes.

Lots of steam in this picture!

Then it's done. I heated up some frozen tater tots and brussels sprouts for side dishes.

Final Product:

My thoughts: Oh childhood how I miss you. Lately I have been reminiscing about the food of my youth. This whole meal took me right back to being a kid. So simple and yet still delicious. This sloppy joe might have been the best one that I have made. Anthony really enjoyed it too. I give this recipe an A and encourage you to try it on a night when you don't feel like slaving away in the kitchen. The flavors were really good. The steak sauce made it a little sweet, but it was still savory enough that it didn't bother me. I have my doubts as to whether or not this recipe is exactly what my mom used, but it's possible I just can't remember the flavor as well as I thought I could.

Once in awhile it's nice to have a meal that is super fast and easy to make. And it's great if it can take you back to a happy time in your life. I've been eating PB&J and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch with Frito's on the side and that brought me back too. Although it makes me realise I really didn't eat very healthy when I was little, thank goodness for a fast metabolism and lots of playing outside!

Next Up: More Vegetable Less Egg Fritatta-my first attempt at making a Mark Bittman recipe. I'm very excited.

Beer, Sausages,and Potatoes...Some of My Favorite Things

2011-08-02T14:22:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone I'm back! My classes are done, so I can cook again. It felt really good to get back into the kitchen. I might almost say that I even missed it. Almost. The expensive grocery bill kind of spoiled my enjoyment of returning. $181! Granted it wasn't all food products, but I would say the majority of the bill was food related. We finally got out to the meat market (Triano's) that is in our town and it was a really good experience. We got a bunch of chicken, ground beef, and Italian sausages for around $13! I was impressed and will definitely be going back there.

For my first foray back into the kitchen I decided to try out a Martha Stewart recipe. I'm not sure that I've ever actually tried one of her recipes before, so I figured I might as well try it out. The recipe is Beer-Braised Sausages and Warm Potato Salad. As I mentioned in the title of this post: Beer, Sausages, Potatoes these are a few of my favorite things! (And so is the Sound of Music!)

This was an easy recipe to follow, the only issue I ran into was browning all sides of the sausage. I got the first three sides browned, but the part that curves was really hard to brown. I ended up breaking one of the sausages a little bit trying to do it, so I finally just gave up.

Next you add the thinly sliced onion and cook that until it's softened.

Then you add the beer (12 oz of pale ale), red potatoes (I quartered mine), water, salt, and pepper. You bring that to a boil and then cover the pan and lower the heat to medium and cook until potatoes are done.

Once the potatoes are done (15 minutes for me) remove the sausages (keep them warm) and take the potatoes out of pan and toss them in a mixture of extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, and parsley.

The last step is returning the cooking liquid back to a boil and reducing it down to about 1 cup of liquid.

Once that's reduced put the sausages back in to heat them up and you are finished. After you put the sausage and potatoes on a plate, drizzle half the sauce on top and serve the other half of the sauce on the side.

Final Product:

My thoughts: This meal was okay, but not great. There wasn't anything wrong with the recipe, but we used a beer that was just way too bitter. I think you can get away with a normal ale. I'd like to use Yuengling if I make this again. I also highly suggest adding sourdough bread to this meal. There was a ton of sauce and using the sourdough to soak up all of the liquid would be super. Also because the sauce was so bitter you couldn't taste the dressing on the potatoes, which was sad because the tanginess of the vinegar would have gone nicely with the beer.

It was easy. It didn't take as long to cook as I thought it would. It wasn't labor intensive. So try it out if Beer, Sausages,and Potatoes are some of your favorite things too!

Next up: My first Mark Bittman recipe, More Vegetable Less Egg Frittata and the Sloppy Joe is back! This time I think I might have finally found the recipe that my mom used to use when I was little. Can't wait to try it!

Eggplant...Finally!

2011-06-07T14:00:00.000-04:00

Stress has overtaken my entire being. One surefire way to help me distress is watching reality television. Thank goodness there is a ton on for me to watch right now. Two reality food shows have started this week Next Food Network Star and Masterchef. There isn’t anyone on Next Food Network Star that has grabbed my attention yet. There is a woman with an absolutely horrible accent. I’ve never heard anything like it. It makes my ears hurt. Check it out just to hear that accent! Masterchef on the other hand has some interesting characters! There was a Scottish woman who was gushing over Gordon (of course I would too!) and he seemed to love her too. Some crazy bearded back woods redneck served the judges alligator. I was impressed, I miss southern food! And then there was the crazy who served sushi off of a naked woman. This confused me completely. So that’s my short and to the point recap of the reality food shows I'm watching now.

Cooking probably isn’t something I should do to de-stress. We all know that it just gets me hyper and usually pretty annoyed. Of course during a particularly stressful day, I decided it was time to try out cooking eggplant. This is my second attempt, the first being The Sandwich That Made Me Cry debacle. I found this recipe on a blog that I read daily Cheap, Healthy, Good. The recipe is Roasted Eggplant with Mushroom Tomato Sauce. There was no way I was going to try to make another sandwich. My sandwich cooking days are over! I cannot tell you how important it is to read through the entire recipe before you start cooking. When will I take my own advice?! I remembered that the eggplant had to be salted and than it sits out for 30 minutes after being sliced (I didn’t know why I was doing this, but apparently it draws out some of the bitter liquid. Very interesting I had no idea this was done!). So I paused Housewives of Orange County and sliced and salted the eggplant.

After Housewives was over I went back into the kitchen to continue with my cooking. Don’t forget to rinse off all that salt!! Thank goodness I didn’t. You broil the eggplant for 8 minutes, flipping them once. While the broiling was happening I chopped a green pepper and onion and I sliced some mushrooms. Of course since everything I do in the kitchen is very slow the eggplant finished cooking before I was done chopping. I was also pretty distracted by the ants that had invaded my living room that day (part of my stress!) and I felt the need to check 50 times or so to see if they were still there (they were and they still are! ) By now it’s was about 6:30 and I was starving. So I grabbed a skillet (heated the oil of course) and put the onions, peppers, and mushrooms in it with some garlic, Italian seasoning, hot pepper flakes, and salt. You cover the skillet and cook this until most of the liquid is gone, then you uncover and cook another couple of minutes.

Meanwhile you get a baking dish ready and spray it with some cooking spray. Once the mushroom mixture is ready you pour half of it into the baking dish, than put ½ of the eggplant layered over that, and add some ground pepper. Spread half of the tomato sauce onto the eggplant, and add half of each of the cheeses (I used mozzarella and feta). Then you go back and do the same thing again (like lasagna), but don’t add the mozzarella cheese this time. Now you have to bake this and that’s when I realized the huge mistake I made! This thing is supposed to bake for 60 minutes! Are you kidding me?! I turned my eyes to the clock and it was 7!! Yikes I wouldn’t be able to eat until 8. This is why you MUST read the recipe through once before you start cooking. I was devastated, but alas I put it in the oven and watched some more reality television (I also snacked on some leftover Crab Rangoons). Once the 60 minutes is up you add the mozzarella and let it get melted and bubbly in the oven for about 5 minutes.

Final Product:

(I just love that little mountain of feta in this picture!)

Even though I had to wait a millennium (between the debacle and the cooking time) to eat eggplant, I was very happy I tried to cook it again. This recipe is great. Once again I over did it with the cheese (you think I would stop and think before putting cheese on my food!), but it was super delicious!! I will be making this every time Anthony isn’t around for dinner (if I don’t order take out)! And there is enough leftover (if you are eating single) for lunch for 2 days at least!! Loved it! If you like eggplant, mushrooms, and red sauce try this out! Finally something I was really happy with. Next time I will remember that I have to cook it for an hour though and start the process earlier. It's a perfect dinner for those who want to eat vegetarian once in awhile!

The Sandwich That Made Me Cry...and Pizza!

2011-06-03T09:43:00.000-04:00

When coming up with ideas for dinners without Anthony, I stated to think about all the things that he doesn’t like (eggplant, mushroom, pineapple). Then I remembered a pizza that my friend mentioned. While it sounds like a weird combination, I could totally see why it would be great. This is why I decided to make a Pineapple and Jalapeno Pizza. Pineapple used to be my topping of choice on pizza and it wasn’t always available. I’ve suggested pineapple on pizza to Anthony before, but he is not into the fruit on pizza thing. Luckily I found a recipe online for this exact pizza. At least some people have good taste out there!

The recipe calls for store bought dough (I had a small thought of making my own crust, but it seemed like too much work). I picked up wheat pizza dough from Wegmans. You can either just stretch the dough by hand over your pizza pan or roll it out with a rolling pin. I stretched it by hand (one less item to wash!) and tried to get it as evenly spread out as I possibly could. Then you make an easy pizza sauce (you could just buy pizza sauce to make this even easier) using a can of tomato sauce, olive oil, 1 clove of garlic chopped, and chopped basil, thyme, and parsley. Spread this over the pizza dough, than add mozzarella and parmesan cheese (1/2 of each). Top the cheese with pineapple (1 large can) and jalapenos (1 can), than add the rest of the cheese. Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes (at least). Mine was in the oven for 35 minutes.

Final Product:

I'm from New Jersey (we like thin crust!) so the crust on this pizza was too thick for me. That fact alone makes me want to try to make my own crust next time. Even though the crust was thick, it was actually pretty good considering it was store bought. I loved, loved, loved the pineapple with the jalapeno. The combination of the sweet and spicy was perfect. Too much cheese for my taste, but with a few little changes this recipe can be perfect!

A few days ago I really wanted to make a vegetable sandwich with eggplant, portabella mushroom and roasted red peppers. I tried combining two different recipes for said sandwich; one where the veggies are grilled the other where they are sautéed. Disaster ensued and it wasn’t just because I was trying to make something up on my own. The first issue was when I decided this would work without using the grill. I thought it best not to try to grill stuff when Anthony wasn’t home, I didn’t want to blow myself up. So I figured why not just pan fry these things (thinking back now I don’t even know why I thought of that, all that oil on a sandwich = yuck). When I took the portabella mushroom out of the fridge it was a little soggy around the edges and when I took the gills out it was starting to break at the edges. I should have just stopped there, but instead I got my eggplant ready. I put some oil in a pan and added half of the mushroom and two slices of eggplant. Another bad idea was adding the roasted red pepper to the hot pan, it started making a popping sound and was sticking to the pan. I pulled that out right away. Meanwhile the mushroom somehow managed to start burning and the smoke detector started shrilling. Everything was way too oily, the mushroom was way too burned and when taking the red pepper out of the pan half of it fell on the floor. Then I when I tried to cut the bread I discovered it was way too hard; I couldn’t even cut it (this is why I don’t like shopping ahead of time!). I got so angry and frustrated with all of it that I took everything and threw it all in the garbage! There is not final product picture for this one. I thought about taking a picture of the trash, but that wouldn’t have been very attractive.

I had been defeated by the cooking. It finally did me in; to the point that I swore I would not be cooking for the entire rest of the time that I was dining alone. Lack of sleep, coupled with being bored sent me over the edge and I ended up in tears over a vegetable sandwich. A sandwich!! I heated up some leftover pizza and took some deep breaths. Is this it? Am I through with all of it? Done?

I really did think I was and then a miracle happened. Last night I got my act together and managed to put a meal together. The recipe was horrible, so horrible I’m not even going to post it, but I cooked. I didn’t let the whole issue of the night before make me lose my confidence in my ability to cook a basic meal.

Here’s a picture of my recovery meal.

It is fettuccini tossed in a mixture of tomato paste, olive oil, garlic, and hot pepper flakes with salad greens added to it. Why? Who knows! Was it good? Not really, but I was happy. Happy that I moved on from the disaster of the day before and had the will to continue on with my cooking adventure.

Can’t wait to see what I come up with for next week. It’s my last dining alone week, so it should be interesting.

Coconut Poached Salmon

2011-05-31T11:23:00.001-04:00

It’s been 4 days of alone time for me. Okay let’s be real I haven’t been alone for very long in the last 4 days. I’m typically a pretty busy person and it seems while Anthony is away that hasn’t changed. I went to a Cabi clothes party (very cute clothes, but way too expensive for me. I’m a firm believer in buying cheap clothes so that I don’t have to keep them for years!), dinner with friends at The Crab Shack (I had the clam bake), more dinner with friends at Beale Street (pulled pork sandwich), and then helping friends move. I got home Saturday night (after helping with the move) and needed to cook something for just me. The itch to cook was there and when the itch happens I must cook (simply because it doesn’t happen often and I wouldn’t want to pass up the chance to blog something).

I was pretty intrigued with what I was going to be cooking, salmon poached in coconut milk. Anything coconut just makes the salivating start. Poaching is something I don’t do very often. I’ve poached eggs just the one time for this blog and I’ve poached chicken for a soup that I make a lot. But I’ve never poached fish. I’m totally in love with the concept! Poaching means (in The Hesitant Cook dictionary): Letting a protein boil/simmer in liquid of some type and it not getting all dried out.

This Rachael Ray recipe was pretty easy to follow. As is typical, I forgot to buy something, in this case a lime. Oh well you can’t expect me to be on top of everything all the time. I also did not make this entire recipe because I was not in the mood for watercress. There is a possibility that I will make this again next week with the watercress, although by then I might find another way to cook salmon (I have one fillet left in the house. If you have a good way for me to cook it let me know.) Back to the recipe, you boil the chicken broth until it reduces by half. At that point you add the coconut milk, lime juice (which I did have on hand), lime zest (which sadly I didn’t have) and basil. Add the salmon and poach it for about 10 minutes. I’m not good at telling when salmon is cooked and I figured it wouldn’t dry out using this method so I poached it for the full 10 minutes. Meanwhile I used some of this rice (I’m not ashamed, I can’t cook rice!) and added some coconut milk to it and heated it on the stove.

The salmon and rice were both done and plated when I remembered that I still had to make the sauce! Oops! Luckily I had heated the plate in the microwave so my food stayed warm. The watercress part of recipe was throwing me off track and I thought I was finished. I brought the poaching liquid to a boil, dissolved the cornstarch with cold water and added it to the liquid. I whisked it until it was thickened and then poured in onto the salmon and rice.

Final Product:

(sorry my pictures are going to be sad since

Anthony has the good camera!)

This was delicious. I ate the whole thing and I didn’t even realize I was that hungry! The fish was very moist. There was a flavor to it that I can’t describe, sorry I tried to come up with the word while eating it but I couldn’t. It was salty and a little sweet. Poaching fish is the way to go! I was very impressed with how moist the salmon turned out. I’m an over cooker and typically my salmon is on the dry side. This method of cooking is going to be something that I do more often. I encourage everyone to try it out. Even non-cooks like me can do this!

Now if only I could figure out why my grocery bill was eighty dollars! I’m only one person this week, how in the world could I have bought $80 worth of groceries? No meat was bought, no cleaning products, no shampoos or anything like that. Also I only bought ingredients for 4 dinners. Thinking back on what I bought I still can’t fathom why my bill was so high. One portabella and one eggplant couldn’t have done so much damage. It baffles me. Completely. Looks like this weekend I am going to the public market for my vegetables and seeing if that makes a difference. I’ll post a blog about the experience and let you know what I discover!

Tomorrow's blog post: Pineapple and Jalapeno Pizza

Healthier Sesame Chicken

2011-05-28T19:02:00.000-04:00

Chinese food just doesn’t taste as good if you cook it at home. Plus it makes your house smell like sesame oil for awhile. Those are the two facts that I had stuck in my head when I attempted to make a healthier version of sesame chicken that I found in Food Network Magazine. So going into this I knew this wasn’t going to be the fried, breaded, so yummy sesame chicken that I order from New Fong Kitchen (our local Chinese takeout).

The first bit of confusion came into play when I noticed that the recipe asked for the snow peas to be trimmed. I had to Google trimming snow peas, having never done that before. What I learned was there is some sort of string like bit that is holding the pea together and people said you should remove them on both sides. There is debate about whether both sides are necessary. I did my best but it was hard to get that little stringy bit off. Sometimes it would break and I would just leave it half there half not there. My thought was as long as these peas are cooked well you can probably just eat the whole thing. Peeling both sides off seems silly because the whole thing will fall apart. This is still a mystery to me; if anyone knows anything about trimming snow peas please give me some pointers!

Now that the snow pea trimming hurdle had been tackled (albeit not very gracefully) lets move on to the rest of the recipe. First step (this happens before the snow pea trimming, but is not nearly as interesting) is marinating the chicken for about 20 minutes in a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce and honey.

Once your chicken is marinated you sauté it (do it in two batches so there is enough room in the pain for the chicken to cook properly) until it’s cooked. The recipe says until it’s browned but you can’t see the color on the chicken underneath all that brown sauce, so just cut a few pieces open to see if it’s done. Another thing about this recipe that I didn’t like was once the chicken is cooked you transfer it to a plate and then you are supposed to wipe out the pan. The pan was covered in sauce and super hot so I got Anthony to help me. This part is ridiculous though. If I were you I would just use a new pan, you shouldn’t have to wipe pans out while you are cooking.

The next step is heating up the scallions, ginger, and garlic and then while you are doing that you are supposed to whisk up a sauce containing chicken broth, cornstarch, sugar, rice vinegar, chili paste, and soy sauce. I read ahead in the recipe and decided to make this sauce while the chicken was cooking. I don’t like to leave garlic unattended over heat because it tends to burn. You add the sauce to the pan and stir until it’s thickened. Meanwhile you can steam the snow peas as you stir the sauce for a few minutes. Once the sauce has thickened stir in the chicken until heated.

I made basmati rice to go with this because it’s the only rice besides instant that I had. Cooking rice is the pits. I just can’t get it right at all. It was mushy and not very appealing. When will I ever understand how to cook rice correctly?!

Final Product:

This was a flavorful (I might use a little less sesame oil next time) dish. The rice was a disaster and the snow pea trimming was a pain in the butt, but other than those things this dish was easy to make. Make this if you have a craving for Chinese, but don’t want all the calories.

There has been a ton of life going on over here. I haven’t had any time to cook, which means no material to blog about. But…there is a challenge ahead of me. My husband has gone off to Peru (for 20 days) and left me to fend for myself and I can’t afford to eat take-out every night. So can I come up with meals for one person or will I just give up and eat frozen meals? The challenge is on!

Coconut Vegetable Curry

2011-05-02T14:52:00.000-04:00

This post will be kind of lame. I didn’t do a lot of cooking the last 4 days. I was supposed to share with you the pork roll sandwich picture, but we had an issue with the pork roll. We bought a roll from Wegmans , but the slices Anthony cut from the roll were so tiny! Question for the Jersey people reading this, was that always the case little bitty slices, because that's not what I remember?! We went back to Wegmans yesterday and the pre-sliced is much bigger than the roll slices. What’s up with that?! I did have Anthony fry me an egg and some pork roll for breakfast yesterday. I’m okay with the pieces being smaller for breakfast, but not on a sandwich. Three of those tiny slices barely filled the Kaiser roll we had it on.

Not sure who was watching the show America’s Next Great Restaurant, but sadly Spice Coast (an Indian fast casual idea) didn’t win. I was pulling for it, because I would eat there a lot! It was between Spice Coast (Indian flavors), Brooklyn Meatball Co (meatballs), and Soul Daddy (soul food). Spice Coast would have been the only place I could eat at more often. I have nothing against meatballs or soul food (I love both a bunch!), but that’s not the type of food I can eat often. Indian is! (In case anyone is wondering Soul Daddy won! Congrats to Jamawn Woods! ) So strangely enough I made a vegetable curry last night, the night that Spice Coast lost. I love Indian spices! I’ve even added curry to my tomato sauce before. Yum!

The actual name of the recipe is Indian Coconut Curried Vegetables. Please don’t judge me when I tell you that I had Anthony chop the vegetables. I’m slow and I just wanted to get the cooking over with and Anthony is so fast at chopping vegetables! Not to mention that cooking should be a family activity right?! So the veggies were prepped: carrot and zucchini sliced, cauliflower cut, green beans snapped (is that what you call that snapped? I did the snapping!), onion, garlic, and ginger chopped. I didn’t buy a chili pepper, because I already had chili paste. I put the onion, garlic, ginger, and chili paste in my little food processor and made it into a paste basically. Put this mixture in a skillet with some oil and added the spices: coriander, cumin, curry, and turmeric and heat it for a couple of minutes. Then I added all the vegetables and the coconut milk. It says to use 1 cup of the coconut milk, but I added a whole can and added some more of the spices in case the milk diluted it. You cover this and let it cook for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

(I just love the color of curry dishes!)

I made basmati rice and heated up some naan bread to go with the veggie curry. Overall this meal was super simple to make! The hardest part is chopping the veggies. The result: ah not so great. It was actually quite bland. I don’t think this is due to me adding a little more coconut milk than asked for since I added more of the spices. I’m not sure what the problem with this recipe is. The only thing I can come up with is to add more salt than the ½ a teaspoon it says to add and maybe even more of the spices. Crazy to think with all those spices we still ended up with a pretty bland main dish. Anthony said it needs chicken, but I’m trying to have as many meatless meals as possible. Although I’m sure it would taste better with chicken in it! I’m actually willing to try it with chicken just to see if it will up the flavor.

Not sure what will be on the menu for this week. I didn’t plan ahead. I wanted my meals to be a surprise this week. I need some excitement in my life, so I’m living on the edge. Yes, for me not having a menu for the week is living on the edge. I’m sure some of you do this all the time, but I’m a planner!

Weekend Cooking

2011-04-27T12:39:00.001-04:00

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

2011-04-22T11:53:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-21T10:46:00.000-04:00

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...

2011-04-18T13:27:00.000-04:00

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

2011-04-14T10:08:00.001-04:00

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

2011-04-07T13:02:00.004-04:00

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

2011-04-05T09:17:00.009-04:00

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.

Some Meals I Thought Were Worth It

2011-03-01T10:55:00.004-05:00

Getting into the kitchen doesn’t scare me very much anymore, but it does still annoy me. I can’t be the only one out there who just doesn’t have any desire to spend every night after work in the kitchen. Sometimes I really can’t get up the energy to cook, like Sunday night when we ordered sushi. Of course I had been in the kitchen for awhile at that point. I FINALLY bottled my beer Sunday. It’s a Nut Brown Ale and it smells really good. Lately I haven’t really cooked anything that felt blog worthy. I’m waiting for the next great idea. In the meantime I did manage to cook three meals that I would like to share with everyone.

The first meal is Arroz Con Pollo (Rice with Chicken). Awhile ago we watched Throwdown with Bobby Flay featuring Arroz Con Pollo and we both really wanted it. I finally decided to make it and I figured why not use the recipe that Bobby Flay used on this show, Adobo Seasoned Chicken and Rice. It looked tasty on the show, but sadly he didn’t win. I had to cut the recipe a lot, but in the end it worked out quite well. Season the chicken and then sauté the chicken until both sides are browned. Put the chicken in another pan, cover and let it cook through over medium heat. Meanwhile you cook the onions and peppers until they are tender, and add tomato and garlic and cook for another minute. Next up the rice has to cook with chicken broth and salt and pepper for about 10 minutes, then add the peas and cook for another 10 minutes. To finish it off you can stir in green olives, cilantro (parsley for us), oregano, and lime juice.

Final Product:

It was a nice meal, very filling. I just used chicken thighs, bone in and with skin, which gives the meat more flavor. I was scared that I would over season the chicken and I ended up not seasoning it enough, so I will season the thighs a bit more next time. Both of us really enjoyed this and we will be having this again soon. I loved the salt of the olives in the rice. Yum!

The next recipe was for an Italian meatloaf. This recipe was created by Giada de Laurentiis, Turkey Meatloaf with Feta and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I absolutely loved this! It was the moistest meatloaf I have had in a long time. Everyone should try this recipe! I’m not going to bore you with the details of how to make it since I’ve previously blogged about making meat loaf before, just get these ingredients and cook! Yes, I'm talking to you! Do it.

Final Product:
The final meal I’m going to share with you today is Stewed White Beans with Spinach and Bacon. I know it doesn’t sound very appealing. I’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately and I love to try any recipes with beans as they are so good for all of us. Cook up some bacon, I used 5 slices chopped and I think that was enough, the recipe calls for 8 that might be overkill. Keep two tablespoons of the bacon grease in the pan and add the potatoes and cook them until brown. Add the onion and cook until soft. Next the beans, chicken broth, and lemon juice is added and you let that sit until almost all the liquid is gone. Stir in the spinach and cook for about a minute. Add bacon on top and some scallions and parmesan cheese. And YUM!! It really was good. I swear to it. The bacon helped give it a little more flavor then it would have had without it, so if you are going meatless I would add some more spices or some hot sauce to this. This is also super easy and perfect for a weeknight meal.

Final Product:

Overall I’ve been having some pretty good luck with my cooking lately. Or maybe I really am learning. (I said MAYBE.) I’m looking around to try some new things that I can share with everyone. I finally have come up with one idea. I’m going to have another battle of the meatless vs. meatfull. This battle will be between a vegetable meatloaf and a regular old meatloaf. I might have to cook the meaty meatloaf with some sort of addition, because I can’t see it even coming close to this veggie meatloaf recipe that I found. So if you have any spectacular meatfull meatloaf recipes that you want to see pitted against the meatless meatloaf send them my way. (Comment below and I'll send you my email address)

Another item I need to discuss with everyone. MY MOM DID NOT USE MANWICH. I repeat my mom has never used Manwich, she was a bit offended that I even considered that possibility. So I asked her for the recipe for the Sloopy Joe’s she used to cook up when I was little and of course she no longer has it. She did tell me the secret ingredient might have been A1 sauce. A1 sauce? I was a bit dumbfounded as I’ve NEVER (apparently to my knowledge) liked A1 sauce! The quest is on to find a Sloppy Joe recipe that includes A1 sauce and is still a little sweet. Once I have found the right recipe I will be cooking up some more Sloppy Joe’s and hopefully finding a match for what my taste buds are craving.

Meatless Sloppy Joe vs. Meatfull Sloppy Joe

2011-02-12T16:43:00.003-05:00

It’s the battle of the meatless sloppy joe vs the meatfull sloppy joe! I remember loving sloppy joe’s when I was a little kid. They tasted salty and sweet and were an absolute mess. What kid doesn’t love a mess?!

Trying to be as healthy as possible I decided to make some vegetarian sloppy joe’s last week. I got the recipe here: Bekka’s Vegan Sloppy Joes. Instead of ground beef in these sloppy joe’s you use “beef” crumbles such as Boca Crumbles. SJ’s are so easy to make I might start putting them onto a monthly rotation. Why in the world did I wait so long to make Sloppy Joe’s?! Anyway back to the recipe, first you chop some onion and green pepper. You put that into a skillet with the crumbles and cook until crumble is cooked and the vegetables are tender. Then you add ketchup, sugar, white vinegar, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper. Stir it all in, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. I taste tested as it was simmering and it didn’t seem sweet enough to me. I added more ketchup and I still couldn’t really get a real Sloppy Joe taste from it.

Final Product:

It was okay. I’m not sure I would make it using this recipe again, because to me it didn’t taste like a sloppy joe. Anthony agreed that it was fine to eat, but not a sloppy Joe. Plus the texture with the Boca crumbles wasn’t super appealing.

Now let’s talk about the Meaty Sloppy Joe. I’ve never mad Sloppy Joe before, but I had an idea of what I was looking for. When I saw Rachael Ray’s Super Sloppy Joe recipe I knew that was the one I was going to try. All the ingredients seemed to be what I believe if in a good Sloppy Joe.

First you cook the ground beef in a skillet with some oil. Once the meat is broken up, add a mix of brown sugar and steak seasoning. Mix it well. Once the meat is starting to brown add chopped red pepper, chopped onion, Worcestershire sauce, and red wine vinegar and cook over medium heat for about 5 more minutes. Next add the tomato sauce and tomato paste and mix them in well; simmer for another 5-10 minutes. I taste tested as I was letting this one simmer and it still didn’t seem sweet enough, so I added some ketchup.

Final Product:

Yummy! Now this one was pretty darn good! It didn’t completely taste like what I remember as a child, but it was very delicious. Anthony also thought it was good and I’m putting this recipe into a monthly rotation. Fast, easy to make, and good! Try it! I encourage everyone to make sloppy joe’s!

Anthony suggested that we do a mix of the veggie crumbles and the ground beef to keep it a bit healthier. I think I’m going to do that and use the Rachael Ray recipe, because the sauce was so much better and more like what I wanted it to taste like. Has anyone had Manwich recently? I thought it was like canned chili, but apparently it’s just sauce! Go figure. Next week I’m going to buy a can of this and see if this might be what I had when I was little. I’ll keep you updated!

Oh Tuna Noodle Casserole!

2011-01-31T13:05:00.005-05:00

Oh tuna noodle casserole. I’ve despised the thought of you for so long. I’m actually a big casserole maker. I love that you can have food for days on end when you make a casserole. It’s the tuna part to the noodle casserole that I’m not so fond of. Canned tuna is not good, in my opinion. I’ve never liked it. Tuna is a lost cause for me since it’s always (in my experience) paired with mayonnaise, which I find even grosser then tuna. Plus canned fish hasn’t worked out so well for me (see this post). Being the type of person that loves a challenge though I felt I needed to take tuna noodle casserole on. The one plus being it was easy to make. At least I wouldn’t be wasting tons of valuable time on something that I wasn’t going to like anyway.

The day of this challenge I was super nervous. I really try to like most foods and have a rule about trying something 3 times and 3 different ways before you decide to not like it. (The possible exception to that rule might be snails. I’m not sure how else to try them other than the traditional way and it was really hard for me to swallow them. I feel like they are going to crawl right back up my throat!) Anyway I was worried because I was positive I was not going to like this casserole.

I found a recipe online at eHow. It was a little different than some of the other recipes online. You make your own sauce, instead of using a can of Cream of Mushroom soup and there wasn’t any cheese in this recipe. First you cook the pasta; I used elbow macaroni (egg noodles seemed like an odd choice to me although a lot of recipes say to use those). Then mix ¼ cup of bread crumbs and a tablespoon of melted butter for the topping. You cook celery and onion in a skillet with some butter until the vegetables are tender. Next add a cup of milk and a cup of chicken broth and stir until slightly thickened and bubbling. You then combine everything in the casserole dish the (I did not use pimientos as the recipe did, but added frozen peas instead!) tuna, noodles and sauce and sprinkle with breadcrumbs. Bake it at 375 for about 20 minutes. Viola! Tuna Noodle Casserole!

Final Product:

Not pretty, but it so comforting!

Anthony’s biggest complaint was that I didn’t break up the tuna enough it was too chucky for him. How was I to know? I don’t eat the stuff! Also it was a bit unhealthy with all the butter. If I do it again I think I will use olive oil for the veggies. Overall I actually didn’t mind it at all. The tuna was pretty well hidden with all the other stuff in it. And considering how cheap this recipe is, we will be eating much more of this meal. Tuna noodle casserole isn’t as scary as you might think! Was anyone else scared of it besides me?!

I have a post that I’m excited about coming up soon. I made meatless sloppy joe’s last night and have decided to make meatfull sloppy joe’s next week and do a comparison. I’m pretty sure I know who the winner is going to be.

Chicken Tikka Masala and Minestrone Soup...Not on the Same Day!

2011-01-30T10:41:00.005-05:00

I'm positive I've mentioned my love of Indian food numerous times now. Nothing I make at home ever tastes as good as what I get here. Of course I can't always afford to eat out every time I'm craving some Indian flavors. Chicken Tikka Masala is one of the ways that I appease my craving. It's a simple dish to make and if you are not sure about Indian food this is probably one of the more tame dishes to try.

I'm getting much better when prepping my food. I've found a comfortable way to chop onions and you will need one onion chopped for this recipe. For the rest of the prep you will need to crush 1 clove of garlic, grate 2 teaspoons of ginger, and cut 1 1/4 lbs of chicken breast into 1 inch chunks. Nothing too difficult or time consuming.

Your first cooking step is to get your basmati rice started. You have to use basmati rice when making Indian food it's so much better then the normal white rice. If you don't have a cinnamon stick to add to the water, you can add some ground cinnamon like we did this night. Heat oil in a skillet and add the onion and cook for about 6 minutes. Next add the ginger, garlic, and curry paste (I also added a little Tikka Masala Paste too; not necessary I just wanted to finish the jar), cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken, some salt, and black pepper and cook until chicken in not pink on the outside. Then add 1 can of crushed tomatoes, cover the skillet and cook for 5-6 minutes more. Once the chicken is cooked uncover the skillet and stir in 1/2 cup of half-and-half and the cilantro if you can eat it. That's it. Simple, easy, tasty and cheaper then take out!

Tasty, tasty!! We enjoy this dish a lot. I recommend it to any of you!

On to the Minestrone Soup. I'm constantly looking for ways to exclude meat from our diet. It much healthier to eat meatless a few times a week. I'm not saying you should cut out meat from your diet every day, but a couple times a week is definitely heart healthy! Soup is also something I'm a big believer in making because it's normally quite easy to make and you usually have leftovers for lunch the next day.

This soup was great. I'm really glad I found this recipe in Food Network Magazine. So as not to bore you with all the details of how to make this recipe I'll just let you know what's in it. The main ingredients are onion, garlic, celery, carrot, green beans, diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, kidney beans, elbow pasta, and parmesan cheese. There are a few other basic ingredients, but if you like all of the items I just listed you will like this soup. Now start cooking! This will be great leftover! Next time I make it I'm going to double the recipe and freeze what we don't eat. Super yummy and basically healthy. I love soup! Have I told you guys that yet! Delicious!

Final Product:

My next two posts will be the beer brewing process and the results of the tuna noodle casserole. Let's just say I didn't hate it.

Tuna Noodle Casserole...REALLY?!

2011-01-25T09:10:00.002-05:00

I have to catch up on some blog posts, it's been super busy so I haven't had time to do anything!! This weekend I'm sitting down and telling you about my beer making, Tika Masala, and Minestrone Soup.

The big story is tonight I am making Tuna Noodle Casserole. I'm taking my own advice and trying tuna again. Tuna = horrible nasty gross to me. Thinking back to one of my first blog posts, I told all of you to give something 3 tries and if you still don't like it then don't eat it. So I'm trying tuna again tonight. I figure with the sauce and the cheese I should be able to choke it down if nothing else.

I'll keep you updated.

Christmas Lasagna and Homemade Sauce

2011-01-07T13:53:00.006-05:00

I cooked once or twice over the holidays and nothing turned out horrible. In fact Anthony told me that the lasagna I made Christmas was my best one ever. The sauce came out wonderfully. It had the perfect amount of spice to it. Yum! I tried to replicate the sauce for New Year's Eve and it didn’t come out the same. Guess I should have paid more attention to how I made it Christmas. I’m a reformed sauce in a jar user. It was just so simple and cheap to buy a premade sauce. The only time I ever made sauce from scratch was when making lasagna; a recipe that I got from Rocco Dispirito and have been using for years now. It’s just a simple cheese lasagna. I’m not even sure if there is anything unique about it.

I decided not to boil the noodles this time around. If you’ve ever made lasagna and boiled noodles you know that it’s not fun. The noodles typically will start breaking once they are cooked and you just have a mess you didn’t really need in the first place. I soaked the noodles in a casserole dish of hot water until I was ready to use them. The rest is a cinch to make, you can either used jar or homemade sauce and you have to make up an egg and ricotta mix. You spread a good bit of sauce in the bottom of a casserole dish (so the noodles have liquid to cook in), add a layer of noodles, then spread on the ricotta-egg mixture, top with shredded mozzarella and grated parmesan (I grated my own parmesan, but I didn’t shred the mozzarella. I got to take some shortcuts somewhere!), top with sauce and repeat the process until you have a good solid lasagna. Stick it in the oven at 350 degrees and bake for an hour. You can cover it for 40 minutes with foil and take the foil off for the last 10 minutes if you want to. I didn’t cover mine, I don’t remember if it’s because I forgot or if it was a conscience decision.

I started making homemade sauce and used Rocco’s Mama’s Marinara recipe. Since I first started making this sauce I’ve added things to it to make it my own. The key for my sauce is chili powder, red pepper flakes, sometimes I add some Frank’s Red Hot or Sriracha, and a lot of fresh basil. The dried stuff just isn’t as good for sauce. I like sauce with a little heat behind it! Once you try making your own sauce and see how easy it is you will be a convert. Just make sure to make big batches on the weekend (it needs to simmer for an hour) and freeze for the coming week or whenever!

Some other stuff I cooked over the holidays was chicken wing dip, artichoke dip, and chili cheese dip. I also made cookies, but ran into some problems making them. Never substitute Splenda for real sugar, it just doesn’t work out well. Lesson learned.

My next post will be about my beer brewing experience. Yes, I am going to try to brew my very own Nut Brown Ale (with Anthony’s help) tomorrow. This should be an interesting event and who knows, maybe I will pick up a new hobby.

Also I’m very close to making a decision on writing a book. Do I think it will be a best seller? No, but it’s something I’ve started and stopped numerous times and I just feel like now might be the right time to dig in and start writing. More details to follow.

Stew and Soup to Warm You Up!

2010-12-07T09:02:00.002-05:00

I’m back! It’s been busy around these parts, so I haven’t really had time to blog about my cooking. I HAVE been cooking and it seems to be going better. I wonder if that has anything to do with the no blogging. Maybe it’s less pressure or maybe I’ve just been cooking easy things.

It’s my favorite and yet least favorite time of the year. I love the holidays! The decorations, the music, the togetherness, and the food all make me happy. Unfortunately I live in Upstate NY, so along with all the cheer and festivities we have snow. The madness has started intensely this year. I don’t think we normally have the amount of snow we are getting right now until January or February. The cold, the wet, the driving…bah humbug!

Taking into account the snowy weather I decided to make a stew and a soup. Both are super easy to make so I wanted to share them with you in case you are also knee deep in snow and need heating up.

The stew was just a basic chicken stew. You take a pound of chicken breast and cut it into ½ inch cubes. I browned it with ½ of a chopped onion. Then you add whatever vegetables you want. I put in some celery, carrots, and peas. The recipe calls for a 16oz bag of frozen stew vegetables. I didn’t see that at Wegman’s, so I added fresh veggies except for the peas, they were frozen. You are supposed to add one jar of gravy. I forgot to buy that so Anthony made some from scratch. He used the juices from the browned chicken, flour, water, butter, and salt (I think that’s it). Last I added some rubbed sage, dried thyme, and ground black pepper. Let that simmer on the stove for 15-20 minutes.

Final Product:
It was quite tasty and it just felt really comforting to eat. Anthony’s home made gravy was much better than the jarred kind. I’m glad I forgot to buy it. I will definitely make this again and maybe add some potatoes next time.

Soup is wonderful. I just love it. I could probably eat it every day as long as I was given a variety. I saw a recipe for Refried Bean Soup on a blog recently that looked delicious and as I was browsing my cook books I found a recipe for it. I’m not sure if the blog recipe was more complicated than the one I found, but I was happy to see how simple this soup is too make. Take a big can (28 oz) of crushed tomato and 1 small chopped onion and bring that to a boil. Once it boils, lower the heat and simmer for 5 minutes. After that you add refried beans (I used two 15 oz cans), 1 can of chicken broth, and some spices. The recipe just calls for cilantro, but we don’t use that in our house so I added chili powder and parsley. You stir that together and let it simmer for 15 minutes. That’s it people! It’s that simple. If you would like some crunch; take some corn tortillas and cut them into strips. Bake them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes. Top with whatever other garnishes you want. We used sour cream and Monterey jack cheese.

Final Product:
This is a very hearty soup. You probably won’t want to have grilled cheese or anything with it. We just had sourdough bread with both of the recipes (Anthony loves sourdough bread!). I’m going to find the other recipe for this soup and see what the differences are, but this was satisfying and I would have it again.

I’m cooking one more time this week and maybe again on the weekend. I plan on posting my holiday cookie making too! I missed blogging! This is fun!

I Did Cook, I Have Proof!

2010-11-14T13:57:00.004-05:00

Finally I have a chance to let you know how my week of cooking has been going. I cooked dinner Monday (with help from Anthony) and Tuesday. Wednesday night I had a headache and was not in the mood to cook so we ordered take-out sushi. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be cooking every single night this week. Turns out I also won’t be cooking dinner Friday since Anthony is working that night. The two meals that were cooked this week turned out to be pretty bland.

Monday night I decided to make Anthony’s father’s pasta e fagiloi. The recipe we had for it didn’t seem very complete so we improvised parts of it. Anthony seemed interested in helping me make this, I think partly because the recipe wasn’t complete and partly because it’s his father’s recipe. We sautéed chopped onion, celery (with the celery leaves), and garlic. Then we added chicken broth about 2 cups and brought it to a boil and added a cup of ditalini pasta. You have to keep stirring it because the pasta will stick otherwise. Once the pasta is cooked you add cannellini beans. Let them heat through and then stir in some grated parmesan, salt, and pepper. That’s it; it’s a very simple easy and delicious recipe. Ours turned out a bit bland. It needed more salt and pepper. Everything always tastes better when someone else cooks it, so hopefully next time when his parents visit his dad can make some!

Final Product:

Tuesday night I was supposed to make Chicken Vindaloo. I don’t have all the spices that you need to make an Indian recipe from scratch so normally I will buy the already made pastes that you can buy at Wegmans. They did not have the Vindaloo paste when I went shopping this weekend. Instead I bought a Hot Curry Paste. Any Vindaloo dish I have had has been really spicy and I wanted to get something that would compare to that. So I made the Hot Curry Chicken the same way I make Chicken Vindaloo. I sautéed a cup of chopped onion, then added 1 pound of chopped chicken breast and cooked it until it was white. Then I added 3 medium cubed red potatoes, 4 tablespoons of the Hot Curry Paste, and enough water so that everything was almost covered (that’s what the recipe says to do) and simmered it for about 20 minutes until the potatoes were tender. The end result was pretty watery, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be. I served it over Basmati Rice and the rice just sucked up all the sauce, the chicken was also a bit over cooked. It just wasn’t Chicken Vindaloo and we found it a little bit bland (that’s becoming a theme with my cooking). A little odd that it was bland considering I put 4 tablespoons of the curry paste in. Guess I won’t be making that again, unless I can find the Vindaloo paste or can make it from scratch. I also served it with Naan Bread and Daal (Indian Lentils). The already cooked lentils was a great idea, they were nice and spicy. If you mixed them into the chicken and rice you got some more flavor out of the meal.

Final Product:

Let's Get Cookin'

2010-11-08T17:02:00.005-05:00

Halloween has come and gone. I’ve had way too much candy! I don’t really have a sweet tooth except for when candy is around. There is no way for me to ignore it, I must eat it.

To ease myself back into cooking I made a Crockpot dish last week. I love the Crockpot! Throw everything in and do nothing with it for 8 hours and then it’s time to eat. How could you not love that?! The recipe is very simple and just contains a can of tomato soup, water, garlic, spices, potatoes, onions, carrots, and turkey thighs. You put the veggies in the Crockpot and lay the turkey thighs on top. Mix up the sauce and pour it onto the turkey thighs. The end result is very tender, fall-off-the-bone turkey meat. It’s a very simple dish, but it's well worth pulling the Crockpot out to make.

Final Product:

In the last week or two I've also made:

Pumpkin Penne

Shrimp and Grits

I know I have been M.I.A. lately, but I plan on coming back strong this week. My menu is: Pasta e Fagioli (my father-in-laws recipe), Mini Cheese Meat Loafs, Buenos Burritos (turkey burritos), Vindaloo Chicken, and Lentil, Spinach, and Bulgur Stew. I don’t except to run into any problems. I’ve made the meat loafs, burritos, and chicken before and the soup and stew don’t seem difficult to make. Of course there is a chance that take-out might play a part again this week, but I’m really going to try to cook Monday-Thursday and one night this weekend.

If you want to try any of the above recipes click on the link to the right of the post call Recipes Used for The Hesitant Cook.

"There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't and that's a wife who can't cook and will."
Robert Frost (1847-1963)

A Soup and a Pie

2010-10-27T17:18:00.004-04:00

I needed to get back to cooking this week. It’s hard, but I’m pushing through. Nothing has turned out spectacular so far. I made two meals this week, Onion Chowder with Cheese Popovers and Sweet Potato Topped Shepherd’s Pie. Both recipes are from Everyday with Rachael Ray Magazine. I’ve made the chowder before, but I had never tried the shepherd’s pie and thought it seemed like a good Fall dish. The only complaint cooking wise that I have for the week is those dang onions. They are killer to my eyes. I feel like the pain will never end! It’s on my list to try cooking something without onions! Sadly even though my kitchen experience this week has been going fairly well, the food just hasn’t been up to par.

The soup was a bit too oniony. I probably didn’t cook the onion long enough. There really isn’t anything other than onions, chicken broth, and milk in the chowder. It was also too watery to be chowder. Chowder is supposed to be a bit thick. Not quite a stew, but like a stews little brother. The popovers are normally good, but not this time. They were starting to brown so I pulled them out and still they didn’t cook all the way through after 35 minutes in the oven. Are you kidding me?! The popovers are good with any soup; they have a piece of cheddar cheese in the middle of them. I will be making them again, but I think the soup is a lost cause and I won’t be attempting that again. I’d rather just make French Onion Soup if I’m going to make onion soup. Anthony agrees that I didn’t cook the onions enough and that the popovers were not quite done. I’m sad about that, he usually loves those popovers.

Final Product:

On to the Sweet Potato Topped Shepherd’s Pie! It seemed like a good idea at the time, now that I’ve thought about it for awhile I guess it really isn’t a good idea. I have this issue where if I already know how to make something (Shepherd’s Pie), then I have to try to one up it with a different version of it. Anthony always tells me I should leave well enough alone, but I just don’t learn. I honestly don’t think that it has ever worked out in my favor when I’ve tried cooking something a little different then I have cooked it in the past. At one point I had 3 pots on the stove which is never a good idea when I’m cooking. I can only truly concentrate on one item at a time. In one pot was sweet potatoes, another had the ground beef mixture, and another had the sauce/gravy. That is way too much stimulation for me. Nothing turned out bad. I did have to use pumpkin beer in the gravy since that’s all we had in the house. I also forgot to add the peas to the beef, onion, garlic, mushroom mixture. Oops! The gravy tasted fine, but was too thin. Using sweet potatoes didn’t ruin the Shepherd’s Pie, but it certainly didn’t bring anything to the table. I would rather have it the good old fashioned way. Anthony just thought this was weird. It didn’t taste bad, but it isn’t worth the effort. It's also not very attractive. Just look!

Final Product:

It looks as if my rut is continuing. What can I do?! If tonight’s meal doesn’t turn out awesome I am going to get really sad. At first this was just making me mad, now I’m starting to feel depressed about. STOP MESSING WITH MY EMOTIONS COOKING!! WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU?!

Tonight is Shrimp and Grits with Okra, southern food here I come! COOKING YOU BETTER STOP MESSING WITH ME!

Do You Miss Me?

2010-10-19T15:14:00.006-04:00

After all the terrible food I made last week, I just haven't really had the desire to make any meals that I haven't tried before. We have been eating raviloi, chinese take out, japenese resturant food, and not a whole lot of anything else. I plan on working up the nerve to try all over again next week. Not having the time to go grocery shopping this week, I didn't get a chance to pull a menu together. We are flying by the seat of our pants when it comes to dinner.

I asked my friend and follow blogger for ideas for something fast and easy. She told me to make a southwest influenced soup that she had posted on her blog. Thank goodness for friends! It was fast, easy, and it tasted really good. Plus it made enough soup for plenty of leftovers! Yay finally something has gone right. Here is where you can find the post about the southwestern soup: Edible Healing. I might have to steal a few more recipes from her if they all are going to turn out this well!

Final Product:

Make it, your stomach will thank you!

Tonight we are having leftover Chinese. The hope is that by the weekend I will get so tired of easy meals that I will be ready to venture into the unknown again. Cross your fingers!

REALLY?!!

2010-10-13T17:29:00.006-04:00

The burrito recipe I found was horrible. I've yet to understand why someone would want to eat that. People gave it really good reviews. I'm not even giving the recipe the privilege of being posted anywhere on my blog. The recipe had black beans, canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, red pepper, cream cheese, cumin, and chili powder. It was blah at best. Way too soupy to go into a tortilla. Anthony helped me by adding the bean mixture to the yellow rice I made for a side. We were able to get it a little less wet that way.

Picture of the inside:

No final picture necessary; it wasn't good. I'm sticking with the turkey burritos I normally make and NEVER trying something like this recipe again. What is going on??? Why is nothing going right in the kitchen?! It's icky food every day that keeps leaving my kitchen! Let's say it's just this week and that next week things will turn around. I need to be more optimistic. If I don't keep optimistic I'll give up and start blogging about something else. Don't worry I refuse to give up yet. If my cube steaks come out good tonight, then a turn around is a coming. Stay tuned!

Getting Bored

2010-10-12T16:53:00.004-04:00

I've been super busy and haven't had a lot of time for blogging. I also didn't bother cooking Friday or Saturday this weekend. We went out for Japanese food at Blue Ocean. It opened last year near where we live and it was so exciting for us since there are no other sushi places where we live. And we love our sushi! On this occasion we decided to try something different and both ordered Bento boxes instead. I got mine with Tempura Shrimp and Teriyaki Beef and Anthony got Tempura Shrimp and Chicken Teriyaki. The bento boxes come with miso soup, salad, a California Roll, tempura veggies, and sticky rice. These were actually really good. I'm glad we branched out and tried something more then sushi. I'm also grateful that our town finally has some ethnic food other then Italian. We do have a very good Chinese take out place, I would say it's one of the best I've ever had, New Fong Kitchen. Anthony suggested I do some research on the demographics of our town and write an editorial for the local paper about why we need more diversity in our food choices around our town. I would die for some good Thai, Indian, and Mexican!

I made a few dinners this week. The first was Caramelized Chile Shrimp from Good Housekeeping magazine. I was very hopeful and that should have been a sign. It really wasn't very good. The sauce burned a bit and it was sticky. I hate sticky! The noodles were cold (intentionally) and I found that odd. Also I substituted parsley for cilantro and ended up over doing the parsley. That was basically all you could taste on the shrimp. Boo to this meal. I will not be trying this recipe again, there wasn't anything super appealing about it.

Final Product:

The other meal I cooked was Sausage-Cauliflower Spaghetti, from Food Network magazine. Thank goodness I got that great soup in the acorn squash recipe from this issue or this issue would have been trash. Pasta and I just don't mix and I should realize that and move on. It's not that this dish tasted bad, it was fine. Possibly a little bit bland, but it just wasn't great! There was nothing about it that made it memorable and it seemed like a waste of time.

Final Product:

Maybe I'm becoming bitter I hate cooking Kim again. I'm just not impressed with this whole cooking process. It's dull and boring and the end result hasn't blown my mind this last week. I need something to awaken my taste buds, until then I'll continue to be bitter and bored.

Next up Bean Burritos, I need to go back to making stuff that I can handle and that I won't hate to eat. Does anyone have any recipes that might get me back into the swing of things? If you do comment below!

Easy Salmon Cakes

2010-10-07T17:06:00.004-04:00

When planning this week’s menu I enlisted Anthony. I’m having trouble coming up with things to eat 5-6 days a week. It’s not the easiest thing to do. I like to have a balance of fish, meat, and no-meat dishes. So I can usually come up with 3-4 meals on my own and then I can’t find 1 or 2 more meals that sound appealing and fit into my balance structure. This week Anthony chose to make fried rice for dinner and he suggested that I make salmon cakes. Salmon anything usually sounds good to me and I found a recipe for salmon cakes on eatingwell.com. Sounds healthy to me!

One of the items I had to buy for the salmon cakes was 15 ounces of canned salmon. I’ve never bought canned salmon. When I’ve made salad and wanted salmon on it I bought it in a one of those pouch/bag type things. I wasn’t ready for what was going to greet me in a can of salmon. I assumed it would be a little like tuna fish. (On another note, I am not a fan of tuna fish, because I don’t really like tuna unless it’s in sushi.) This was NOTHING like tuna fish. The minute I opened it I was scared. The first thing I noticed was the skin on the fish. Ew. Then I noticed that there were bones!! Bones and skin, what the heck! Now skin is fine if I’m pan frying fish on the stove or grilling it. It is not okay if it needs to be removed in order for me to make patties out of it. So I started cleaning the skin off the fish. That was when I noticed the most horrifying item, the spinal cord!! This fish still had a spine people!! That is not okay. That will never be okay to me! I HAD to clean all the bones off this fish. I wasn’t eating any, that’s for sure. SO I pushed the bones off the fish with a knife, one vertebra at a time. I’m still uneasy about this whole experience. I will not be rushing out to buy more canned salmon anytime soon. I googled canned salmon later and found out that some people are actually eating it with the skin and bones still there. Apparently this is possible because it’s mostly cartilage. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to eat cartilage either. You should see how picky I am when eating chicken wings. Forget it! Eating bones is not an option people!

The rest of this was a breeze compared to that first step. In a skillet with oil, cook the chopped onion and celery until soft. Then take it off the heat and stir in the parsley. Next you add an egg and mustard to the salmon and mix that well. You then add the onion mix, breadcrumbs, and ground pepper and mix that well too. Form the mixture into 8 patties and put them in a skillet with some oil and cook the patties until their undersides are golden. Then flip them over onto a baking sheet and place in the oven at 450 degrees for 15-20 minutes. .

Final Product:

The salmon came out pretty well. Both of us enjoyed the flavor of the cakes. They were more bready and dense than I typically like my seafood cakes. I’m a more seafood, less bread type of girl. I used a little less then a cup of breadcrumbs and the recipe calls for 1 3/4 cups. That is way too much and even what I put in was too much, so I would start with ½ a cup of breadcrumbs if you decide to try this recipe. It was nice having a salad for a side dish, instead of our usual starch. I also made Creamy Dill sauce to dip the salmon cakes into. That is just mayo, plain yogurt, scallions, dill, lemon juice, and black pepper. It wasn’t bad, though I don’t really love mayonnaise.

I’m not sure what I’m cooking next; depends on what I might be in the mood for. Maybe shrimp. I do love me some shrimp!

Chicken, Biscuits, and Gravy Casserole

2010-10-05T17:23:00.004-04:00

I stopped numbering my days. It didn’t really make sense anymore since I’ve been cooking some days and then have 3-4 days of no cooking. I’m up to 47 posts though which I found pretty impressive. I’ve been eating out and not cooking this last week. We went to Jasmine’s Asian Fusion one night. They have food from various Asian area’s of the world. I had a $25 gift certificate from Restaurants .com. I love this site. It’s really good when you can get the gift certificates at 80-90% off. I bought 3 more the other day because they we 90% off. Give it a try. It’s pretty cool.

We had the fresh spring rolls to start off with. Unfortunately in the description it didn’t say that they had cilantro in them. Anthony ate one and discovered that and I had to eat the rest. Luckily it also came with a carrot salad, so he ate that. Then we both ordered the Red Curry Chicken with Jasmine and Sticky Rice. Very good and pretty darn spicy! We also ordered the Black Rice Pudding. It had a good texture and a delicious coconut flavor. I love coconut! You should definitely give Restaurants.com a try, it’s made me try different places and most of them we have really liked.

I wanted to make something easy Sunday after the Hilton Apple Festival. We had some amazing apple crisp, apple sausage and hot mulled apple cider at the festival.for lunch and then had pumpkin custard from Abbot’s for dessert. Yum. It was a brisk Fall day so I thought a casserole would be perfect for dinner. So Chicken, Biscuits ‘n’ Gravy Casserole was on the menu. This is from a really old issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray. It’s a very simple recipe. The thing I love about this is you use a rotisserie chicken. I love rotisserie chickens from Wegmans. They make the car smell so amazing! I get hungry just being around rotisserie chicken.

You pull the chicken off the bone and shred it either with a knife or your fingers. In a skillet you melt some butter and add mushrooms, onion, and celery. Cook until the mushrooms are browned; lower the heat, add flour and cook for a minute.

Then stir in the chicken broth, bring it to a simmer and cook until thickened. Next you add some milk and simmer for another minute. You remove it from the heat and finish off the gravy with some lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Pour the gravy over the chicken, which should be in a butter greased casserole dish.

Then you make some garlic butter for the biscuits. Your biscuits consist of baking mix (Bisquick), milk, and shredded cheddar cheese. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture on top of the casserole and brush them with the garlic butter. Put the casserole in the oven at 425 degrees and bake for about 25 minutes. You can brush the biscuits with the garlic butter again about halfway though.

Final Product:

Anthony swears this came out differently than it has in the past. He thought it should have been made in a small dish with less biscuits. I think he is thinking of a different casserole. It tasted good regardless and it’s one of those quick and easy meals that everyone likes to make! Plus it’s comfort food, which makes everyone happy and comforted.

Next up is Salmon Cakes and boy was I in for a shock!!

Coriander Crusted Sea Bass and Asparagus over Sweet Potato Puree

2010-10-04T16:40:00.003-04:00

I wonder at times where people come up with some of the recipes they create. When I picked out the recipe for our meal Saturday night, I just wanted it to be healthy. So I decided to get a recipe out of Cooking the Real Age Way. This is the second recipe I’ve made from this cookbook. It doesn’t seem to be a great book. The meals are a little weird. I didn’t really think about what I picked out until after I cooked it and Anthony said, “None of this stuff goes together!” I have a feeling that one of the doctors Dr. John La Puma came up with these recipes. He has taught nutrition and cooking classes for people and has a book called Chef MD. Maybe the doctors should leave the cooking to the chefs or at least the creating of recipes.

I made Coriander Crusted Sea Bass and Asparagus over Sweet Potato Puree, but I used haddock instead of sea bass. There was no way I was spending $21.99 a pound for sea bass and I think haddock is just as tasty. I’ve never paid attention to coriander before and didn’t really know what it was. I was also scared to try a whole seed of it, because I didn’t know if I would like the taste. Sometimes I like a flavor when it’s mixed with other things and not own it’s on. Coriander seemed to me like something I wouldn’t like on it’s own and I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I was cooking basically without complaint and feeling good in the kitchen. Once I had everything prepped and the sweet potatoes were cooking it was time for the fish.

I am not good at cooking fish. It always falls apart on me. Fish is healthy and I love it so I will continue to cook it even if I’m ruining it! I sprinkled some of each seasoning on the fish: the ground coriander, salt, cayenne pepper. Then I pressed some coriander seeds into the fish as the recipe suggests. The fish of course immediately stuck to the skillet and started falling apart. Then with Anthony’s help I got the fish flipped over without it breaking too much and threw it in the oven. The asparagus was already in the oven. You just put it in a baking pan and sprinkle it with olive oil. Everything was timed pretty perfectly. I mashed the sweet potatoes and I was done.

Final Product:

My Thoughts? Just look at the plate above. Doesn’t it all seem a little awkward and odd? There was way too much coriander on the fish. I’m not sure if that was my fault or the recipe. It turns out I don’t really care for coriander and neither does Anthony. Or at least not that much coriander! So we tried eating around it on the fish and didn’t bother eating the pieces covered in it. We ate the potatoes and asparagus which were both good. The meal was just too strange to have again. Each would have been individually good (without the coriander), but they really don’t mesh well together.

Next up is Chicken, Gravy, and Dumpling Casserole. I didn’t cook as much as I thought I would last week. This week I will be cooking more often. So stay tuned!

Squash Soup in Pumpkin Bowls

2010-09-28T16:41:00.004-04:00

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

2010-09-27T17:11:00.006-04:00

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

2010-09-26T18:47:00.005-04:00

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

2010-09-25T09:49:00.006-04:00

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

2010-09-16T19:56:00.002-04:00

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)!!