This last week in our household has been all about trying out new foods as an effort to expand our short menu. Some of these efforts turned out well... others, not so much.
On Monday I did ribs for the first time. This was something I had thought about trying out for a little while, but when I saw that Publix had them on special, I decided to swing by there and get some. I was originally thinking of doing them in the slow cooker, but ironically, it sounded easier to cook them in the oven, so I went for that. Was it a new food find or a food fail? Definitely a find! All I did was follow the instructions on the package of ribs, which included marinading them when there was thirty minutes of cooking left, and they were delicious! Ribs have definitely been added to the menu.
On Tuesday dinner was taken care of for us. Wednesday I decided to try creating my own pasta. It sounded simple enough: cook the pasta noodle of choice, cook some beef, get some sauce and cheese, then mix it all up together. That works, right? I guess not when you're only a year into your cooking. This was a fail in my eyes, though Garrett insisted it wasn't bad. The biggest problem was the fact that the noodles did not seem fully cooked, which was odd since I've cooked these types of noodles several times before and never had this problem. Also, there was definitely not enough sauce. However, it was edible enough for Wednesday and leftovers on Thursday, but not ready for a repeat trial anytime soon.
Also on Thursday, I fixed green beans, which I do often, but this was the first time I used a can of "no salt added" green beans, and that was also a complete fail! There was no flavor whatsoever, even when you added your own salt and pepper. This was the first thing I fixed that I did not like that Garrett did not try to convince me was fine, so I'm pretty sure he wasn't a fan either, though he ate what he had and did not complain. We only had two other cans of these horrid green beans, and we passed them along to my dad, who apparently likes them...
This may be cheating a little bit, but come on, sometimes you just have to. On Friday I had no plans for dinner and Garrett said he was in the mood for fried chicken, so I thought I'd swing by Publix again and pick up some of theirs. We had it once with Garrett's family, but what was different this time was we would be eating it fresh. This was a definite find! It was really good and obviously super easy; I just needed to fix a side dish. We also had leftovers for last night, which made it even more of a win.
Then tonight I fixed one last new recipe for the week (if we're considering Monday-Sunday a week instead of Sunday-Saturday), a recipe in my Betty Crocker cook book called Easy Cheeseburger Pie. It sounded promising, with Garrett's two favorite things: beef and cheese. Unfortunately, I found it to be a bit of a fail. Like the pasta it was still edible (more edible than the pasta in my opinion), but it had very little taste. We noted it was kind of like a breakfast casserole that Garrett's mom fixes, but not nearly as yummy.
So after this week, I can add ribs and Publix fried chicken to our menu. At least it's a start. How do your cooking experiments usually go?
4 comments:
Kroger has a Private Selection sauce called "Organic Tomato Basil" or something like that. Best sauce ever that requires nooo tweaking. If you're having issues getting the pasta done enough, you could try a "fresh" pasta instead of dried--Buitoni is a brand you usually find in the psuedo-frozen section (near butter, yoghurt, etc.) and they make really awesome stuff--especially their tortellini and mezzaluna. Boil the Buitoni for like 3 minutes, heat the sauce in the microwave, and put Parmesan on top. You can't go wrong.
(Of course, there's no meat in what I usually make. Dunno how that would go at your house. I think some of the Buitoni pastas have meat, though ... ravioli kinda stuff.)
Another thing I thought of you may want to try ... veggie pot pie. Buy a box of that roll-out Kroger pie dough, two cans of mixed veggies, and one of those little cans of cream of mushroom.
Mix the veggies and cream of mushroom. Add a tiny bit of milk to loosen it up. A little rosemary for flavor. Unroll one of the pie dough sheets in a pie tin and fill with veggies. Top with the other dough round. Poke a couple holes. 400 for 20-25 minutes.
Obviously, you could incorporate some chunks of chicken for chicken pot pie, too. I would guess you'd just need small enough pieces and pre-cook them to be sure they were done.
(I love food ...)
My favorite dried noodles are Barilla-- they're the only brand I can seem to cook correctly. Although, now that I've read Brian's comment, I want to try Buitoni.
I think the only true fail I've had in cooking so far is the first time I baked drumsticks for the first time-- I didn't cook them thoroughly, so when John poked it with a fork blood came out :D
Mmmmm. I think I'm coming over for dinner this week. ;)
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