Cooking Week - Day 6

Another day of breakfast. I made Baked Oatmeal. It was really good, but it was also very sweet. I think it would need some bacon or something to go with it, to offset the sweetness in flavor and the sugar in the diet. The kids liked that I let them sprinkle chocolate chips on their bowls of oatmeal. They ate it right up, too.

Cooking Week - Day 5

I made breakfast again today. I love breakfast foods, they are totally my favorite. Today, I made Tropical Smoothies, as well as eggs and bacon. I really liked the smoothies. My favorite part was putting in the cream of coconut. I could eat that stuff right off the spoon! The recipe calls for pineapple sherbet, but I couldn't find any at the store, so I used raspberry sorbet. I think it made the flavor a lot stronger, but they were still so good.

Cooking Week - Day 4

I had a really difficult time getting motivated to cook today. I've had some personal stuff going on that has been affecting my depression, so that was a huge part of it. I also get frustrated with cooking in my small kitchen. But I was able to get myself to make dinner.

I made Asian Lettuce Wraps and Mango Rice. I didn't like the flavors really at all. In fact, I didn't even finish my lettuce wrap. The kids also hated it. I don't know what Mitchell thought because he took his to work and he's not home yet. I think that many people would actually like these recipes, they just aren't for me. And they took a lot of work! It probably would have been less if my kitchen wasn't so crowded and I had more clean dishes, though. And more time, since I was rushing to finish before Mitchell went to work.

Asian Lettuce Wraps and Mango Rice

I also had time to make Berry Cheesecake Pops, but they are still freezing right now. I'm excited to see what they are like tomorrow.

Cooking Week - Day 3

I started out trying to make breakfast, but a lot of stuff got in the way, so we ate breakfast for lunch. I made Breakfast Taquitos with Lime-Chipotle Dip.

I made the tortillas myself, and I'm not very good at it yet.

 This is the dip. It was basically sour cream with some lime juice, salt, and chipotle powder.

This is the only taquito that actually rolled and looked nice. The rest kind of folded because my tortillas were too stiff. We also had sugared berries.

I liked the taquitos a lot. I did forget to put the Tabasco into the eggs, so they could have used a little more flavor. And I need way more practice with making tortillas, so they didn't work too well. The tortillas were a little overcooked to start with and then putting them in the oven with the egg inside them really made them get crunchy. The dip was really good with it, too. Mitchell said the dip redeemed the taquitos from being a little overcooked and bland.

Cooking Week - Day 2

This morning for breakfast, I made One-Bowl Zucchini Banana Muffins and scrambled eggs. The muffins were so good! They were super moist and flavorful. Mitchell and the kids liked them a lot, too.

I also went shopping again for tomorrow's ingredients. But I didn't have time to do any other cooking because we just ended up being so busy. We'll see what happens tomorrow with the recipes that I have planned.

Cooking Week - Day 1

I decided to do Cooking Week. I love trying new recipes and new cooking techniques, so this seem a natural hobby choice for me. However, I struggle with having little kids bug me and mess me up, so that's going to be a challenge this week.

This morning, I spent forever planning out a long menu with at least 4 new recipes per day. That's obviously not going to happen, but I can at least try, right? We also went grocery shopping for today's, and some of tomorrow's, ingredients. Also, pretty much all of the recipes are from my two Our Best Bites cookbooks.

I tried out 3 new recipes today. For dinner, I made:

Fresh-Squeezed Lemonade

Creamy Roasted Garlic and Asparagus Soup

 and Grilled Summer Vegetable Sandwiches

There were mixed opinions on the food. I loved the lemonade and it wasn't really difficult to make either. The soup and sandwich took a lot of work, but I didn't really love them. I think part of that may be that they are different flavors than I am used to eating; I'm more of a PBJ or steak kind of girl. I didn't weigh the asparagus when we bought it, so I might not have had enough, which made the garlic flavor of the soup kind of overpowering. Mitchell liked it, though, so it might just be me. The sandwich was pretty good, too, but I think I tried putting too many vegetables on, so it kept falling apart. And I've been realizing that I'm not a big fan of eggplant, so that was a problem for me, too. Mitchell liked the sandwich, too. His only problem was he felt the meal needed something else to be complete. I took half of the soup and sandwich to a sick friend's house, and she loved the meal. She said everything was like eating at a cafe. So I guess, it turned out better than I thought myself. Oh, and the kids only like the lemonade and the bread, nothing else. 

Sick Leave

I am sick. So I won't be working on any hobbies this week. Come back again next week, though!