Week 3

So I've realized that I haven't been doing a very good job in keeping my blog up but next week I going to try my best to stay on top of cooking one meal per day along with following it up right after by writing my daily blog posting. So this last week I was only able to cook a few meals but I think I did a pretty well. On Monday I started off well by preparing lasagna for myself and my family. My mom got me the ingredients and gave a cookbook that I think I'm going to be working out of from now on. It's a Betty Crocker cook book but I like most of the stuff in it so I think it will do. The recipe was pretty straight forward and everything went well until the end because I had different noodles than the recipe called for so I had to improvise. I ended up just sort of throwing everything together and sticking it in the oven. It turned out great for the most part. Around the edges there were a few spots that were dried, but I just cut those pieces off before serving it up. My family complimented me on it which felt a little funny but I guess because it was one of the first meals I had made for dinner they thought they should. I thought it tasted pretty good overall and felt pretty good about not messing it up even after having to make up a few of the directions. I didn't do anything on Tuesday because a sort of family emergency came up. On Wednesday I made stir fry for the first time which was pretty nice. I was really surprised on how easily sir frying can be. Its fun to be able to just sort of throw everything in the pan and it comes out tasting good. I made a vegetable stir fry and through in a few thin slices of steak and I thought they complement each other really well and the whole things taste great. I can’t say if other people thought it tasted good because I liked it so much I ended up eating nearly all of it. Wednesday was a pretty big day and after the stir fry I decided to make a desert which didn’t end up tasting very good. My favorite type of pie is lemon meringue and I thought I would try my hand at that. The pie it itself didn't taste too bad but it was a little too runny and there were far too big of lemon shavings in it. The big problem came when I tried to make the meringue. The recipe calls for the sugar to be added slowly to the egg whites while I was beating them and instead I dumped all of it in at once. The end result was a big lump of sticky goo. So from it I learned to add slowly if you want something to rise up like the meringue and also to watch out for keeping a accurate ratio of liquid and solids so your meal doesn’t come out too runny or too dry. Thursday was the biggest day and my first real learning from another person. My uncle came down from Chico and taught me some basics about butchering. He showed me how to de-bone and butcher a chicken along with lending me a few of his knives which are crazy sharper than any of our knives. I found it pretty easy to cut it up and then I cooked it up.