Taquitos: A Split Vote

I didn't take a picture, because they were truly ugly. But Rachel Rays refried bean and cheese taquitos were yummy and surprisingly simple to make. Three of us loved them, and two of us turned up their noses. I loved the fact that you could have the beans in the cupboard and the corn tortillas in the freezer, and you could just whip em up with a little extra cheese. Easy. Cheap. Sounds like the '80s.

1 for 3. Not bad for a rookie

My first week with Ra-Ray’s 7-Day List (from the November Issue of her magazine) began with an easy shopping trip, but a recipe dud: Salmon & Potato Chowder. I had visions of one of my mom’s favorite last-minute dinners-- no not reruns of The Match Game with a sandwich, but creamed potatoes and canned salmon. What I ended up with was very bland, boring. Maybe Rachel needs to spend some time with Emeril.

Second day was a mixed bag: meatballs that fell apart, but yummy roasted green beans. Why have I never thought of roasting a green bean? There is no chopping, and they cook in no time at all. Kind of genius, Ra-Ray, but the meatballs . . . oy. Are you sure you’re Italian?

The next night produced a winner: Shrimp with Bacon & Rice. Super simple, prepared in one dish, with the rice baking in the oven (love that). And I love cooking zucchini, because I love cutting zucchini. I mean, a toddler could cut it with a PlaySkool knife. Put those kids to work early, I say!

On Day Five: Failure

Smoked Trout in Lettuce Cups. Or some damn thing. The name of the recipe has flown out of my brain because it managed to be too spicy, yet boring, and all the smoked trout was full of f’ing bones. And I love smoked trout, let me tell you. Show me a kid who grew up near Wisconsin and I'll show you a kid who loves cheese and smoked fish. But this . . .was nasty. We ended the week going out for a burger. Still, not bad: we all agreed we’d eat 2 out of the five recipes again.

Now – next week . . .
I’m not much of a Rachel Ray fan – I think she makes simple things complicated, as opposed to Ina Garten, who makes complicated things simple. I like simple, okay?
(And I guess I like someone who looks like my mommy explaining things to me as opposed to someone who looks like my gym teacher.) However, my friend Ellen turned me on to RR's magazine, which has one of those features that show a whole weeks dinners with a shopping list. So we’re trying that next week, with a few substitutions. From epicurious to Rachel Ray. This should be interesting!

Salad 2.0

Day 5: Arugula Salad with Candied Walnuts and Goat Cheese.

Okay, honestly, I chose this recipe because I thought I'd need an easy day, and again I was foiled by not reading the instructions. (Somewhere my third grade teacher is saying: mhyoo-ha-ha!!) While not difficult per se, the salad recipe calls for cooking three separate things. Not what you expect when you sit down with a glass of wine to make a salade. However, the lack of chopping is a huge plus. By the end of the evening I'm kind of skipping with joy because I learned some new skills: the candied walnuts basically require making caramel: Something I've always been afraid of, frankly.(I always pictured myself getting burned and getting fat, all in the same day.)And making croutons was also new to me (I know, I know, don't start. I'm an idiot.) And man, homemade croutons are the best.

Chicken Wrangling

Day 4: Chicken Provencal Stew in the Crockpot. Cutting up and/or manipulating poultry totally wigs me. (Probably due to the time I was tricked into touching a turkey neck soaking in the kitchen sink by my Aunt Louise. An excellent Halloween prank, right up there with grape eyeballs.) If I had read this recipe carefully I would have realized that in the time it took to get this sucker into the crock pot (remove chicken skin, brown chicken on all sides, deglaze the pot, brown onions and garlic, simmer with wine and flour until it reduces etc etc) I could have made fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy. However . . . I have to admit that the resulting dish tastes 1000% better than any other chicken or sauce I have made in the crockpot. And the leftovers are great -- there have been leftovers all week: rice, broccolini, mushroom soup I made out of the leftover mushrooms. A great side benefit.

Meatless Monday, or What-the?-Wednesday

Day 3: I started trying out Meatless Mondays last year, which thrilled the children because it inevitably meant an occasional round of mac and cheese. I'm always on the lookout for vegetarian recipes because they're better for us and cheaper. Tonight is Mushroom Ragout. A milestone for me as I used to have an irrational fear of mushrooms, because my mother told us never to eat anything mushroom-like growing in our yard or it would kill us immediately. And since every mushroom I’ve ever seen looks exactly like what was growing in our backyard, how did anyone know the difference? (I even started writing a novel set in a mushroom farm because I was so fascinated yet afraid.) But my stance was softened a couple years ago by accidentally eating some sautéed mushrooms. I’ve grown more adventurous now – but I have to say, portobellos and shitakes still freak me out. They look like alien space ships.

Everyone likes this creamy, meaty dish, but my husband says, “Y'know, this would be really good on top of a steak.”

I'm going to puree it and add some chicken broth and make soup out of it tomorrow. Or compost.

New Ingredients Everyone Else Has Eaten But Me

Day 2: Next up: Salmon with Rice and Broccolini. We chose this because youngest daughter doesn’t like salmon (okay, she doesn’t like anything, all right?) and she is not home. (That, and salmon doesn’t exactly keep in the fridge.) It’s prepared in one pot (love that) but in kind of a weird way – the rice is half sautéed, half-baked in the oven, then the other ingredients are added on top of it. This seems like something you would do in your dorm room because you only have one pan and a hot plate, but hey, whatever.

It also uses two ingredients I’ve never bought or cooked before: shallots and broccolini. Yes, it’s true, I’m a grown woman and I didn’t even know what a shallot looked like. (I wandered all over the grocery store looking for it, thinking it’s scallion-esque, and it turns out its garlic-esque.) This recipe also has a lot of lime in it which the hubby loves, and some cilantro (which the hubby hates. I'll use a little less.) I also have to substitute a little ‘fish sauce’ for the soy sauce in the recipe, due to daughter’s allergy, which is a little bold but hey, it’s fish on fish, same damn species.

This dish is a huge hit with everyone – super simple, and absolutely light and delicious. Everyone loved the broccolini, which was tender and very bright tasting. (The older I get, the more I despise broccoli for its bitter, nubby ends. This is like all of broccoli's good qualities with the rest bred out somehow.) And shallots? Wow. Like a whole other species. Where the hell have I been? And they cost maybe 25c. Much cheaper than a Vidalia onion.

First Day of Food Organization

Day 1. I cannot tell you what a relief it is to know what you are making for dinner, and to have all the ingredients. (This usually only happens to me on Thanksgiving, and even then I always forget cranberries.) It is like knowing you have an outfit in your closet that fits, goes together, and is a good color for you (shit maybe I should be working on my closet.)

We chose Beef with Mushrooms and Snow Peas for the first dish because my middle daughter is out of town, and she is allergic to soy and shuns red meat. However by the end of the day, all my kids suddenly have playdates. Coincidence?

Considering it’s a stir-fry, this dish is shockingly easy to prepare – because the peapods don’t need to be chopped, and the mushrooms chop easily, and my husband happens to be home in time to slice the beef. It’s very yummy but a bit too fragrant – I think it needs less ginger and five spice powder. But it’s a keeper, and I think my kids would all eat it because it tastes a lot like the stuff we get in those little white containers with the wire handles. I don’t usually cook Chinese dishes because It’s too much chopping and too many ingredients and it makes my head hurt even before the msg kicks in. But this recipe has proven me wrong. And there is only one pan to clean, so I won't feel like a professional dishwasher in addition to a chef.

Planning Meals When You're Not A Cafeteria Worker

In case you are wondering who the asshole is that rips out magazine pages in your doctors’ office: it’s me. (shoulda used that pig butt photo here I guess.) I’m always gathering recipes, because a) I’m always hungry and b) I’m easily influenced. So I have a lovely little notebook filled with sleeves containing recipes from magazines. And -- I have an electronic grocery list with columns for every aisle of the local store that I forced my husband to create. (I know, slightly anal. Again, pig butt.) But what I’ve never done is sat down and planned to cook more than one recipe at a time during a given week – then plugged it into the list -- because that’s too hard. That's like owning a restaurant or something.

However, while playing around on Epicurious.com I saw that they have a grocery list feature that aggregates groups of foods from multiple recipes, creating a single list. Voila! I decide to choose recipes from this site as an experiment. My goal for the perfect week: two fish recipes, one beef, one chicken, one vegetarian, one salad (and one of these recipes has to be in a crockpot for a busy day.) Okay, that’s only six, but I need a day off.

I chose Beef with Mushrooms & Pea Pods, Salmon with Rice & Broccolini, Smoked Trout in Lettuce Cups, Chicken Provencal Stew, Mushroom Ragout, and Arugula Salad with Goat Cheese and Walnuts. All of them look simple, some are vegetarian, and none of them are too spicy or odd or expensive. But my youngest daughter will probably hate them all. Tough. Someday she'll be a mother/restaurant owner and she'll know why we sometimes serve what we serve for dinner. "It's Make-Your-Own-Sandwich Night! Yippee!"

As they say in Australia, I'm stuffed when it comes to cooking

Unfortunately for my poor family, I often approach cooking the same way I approach writing my novels. I’m drawn to dangerous situations with interesting damaged characters. This has led to an unhealthy attachment to the dark side: peppers, chiles, curries. My middle daughter has been known to flee the table sobbing that her teeth were on fire.

When I manage to tame this instinct toward spice, I always seem to go in the opposite direction: comfort foods that are cooked in one pot. The kids don’t dig this either: they moan when they see the crockpot. “Can’t we eat normal food?” the youngest one cries. “Can’t we just get a bucket of chicken and eat out of it with our hands like other kids?”

Add to that the fact that we all have food allergies, my husband and I both work, the kids all play multiple sports, and he does the grocery shopping, but I do the cooking – and it’s a recipe for disaster. (That should have been the name of the blog but it was taken.)

Recently, I have vowed to get our dinner situation under control through better planning, smarter purchasing, and more variety. I’ll share recipes, links, online tools and photos along the way. But mostly I’ll have a record for my kids of the fact that I tried. I really did.