Week 8

Monday- Alright to night I made my first roast which was pretty nice. I got some beef chuck boneless roast and we had all of the vegetables already at the house. The setup was pretty easy and all I did was cover it in salt, pepper and some olive oil so that it would not stick to the pan. I let it cook for about an hour and when I checked it seemed to be done because the little red thing in the side had popped out. I learned tonight not to trust those because the red timer that comes on it popped out far too early and roast turned out very raw but you couldn't tell from looking at it. So after I cut it up and tasted it I noticed how raw it really was and ended up throwing it in a frying pan for 5 minutes to finish it off. I also learned from this to check your food throughout to make sure that everything is going on track. Once the meat was a little more cooked it tasted fine. I also made some mashed potatoes and come cauliflower with melted cheese which tasted pretty good. Here are the ingredients:

1 First-cut brisket (5 lb)
1/4 Cup(s) Corn oil
8 Onion(s), thickly sliced
6 Carrots, peeled
3 Garlic clove(s), minced
2 Bay leaves
4 Tablespoon(s) Tomato paste
16 Ounce(s) Can tomatoes, with juice
1 Cup(s) Dry red wine

Tuesday- I didn't end up actually cooking tonight but I help my mom. It was nice having someone else make dinner after I have gotten used to cooking it myself. She made some raviolis and cauliflower. I didn't do much but I made the sauce with the blender because it was a pesto sauce. It was a really nice, simple meal and I’ve found that a lot of the simple stuff actually tastes just as good as other things if not it better than.
Thursday-Tonight I made some broil vegetables and some Angel hair pasta with lemon and chicken. While I was waiting for the water to come to a boil I started to prepare the sauce and I had gotten a precooked chicken because those things are amazing and I felt kind of lazy. Next I just melted the butter and added some lemon juice and seasonings until I got it tasting pretty good. Before we sat down to eat, I drizzled the sauce over the chicken and added the noodles on the side. My mom made a salad to go with it and it turned out to be one of the nicest meals so far. So I found a pretty cool website that allows you to organize the recipes so that they appear in order of difficultly along with a number of other filters. I have just now started to search by intermediate meals rather than beginner meals so I guess that that is an improvement. The meals aren't exactly more difficult they just take more time and some knowledge of basic cooking which I now have. Another god thing about the website is that it allows you to change the number of servings and then it changes the ingredients accordingly. Besides giving the recipe it also gives you "related meals" which is nice. Ill posts the link to the site at the bottom of this post but overall its one of the best that I have found. Here are the ingredients:

1/2 Can(s) thyme
1 Bunch(s) minced parsley
326/625 Pound(s) cooked, diced chicken breast
137/4377 Quart(s) lemon juice
2/3 melted margarine
17/29 Pound(s) cooked and drained angel hair pasta
1 Ounce(s) salt
1 Ounce(s) black pepper
1 French bread
1 Package(s) tossed salad

Wednesday-Tonight I was a t my dad’s house so I was just cooking for two. I made something called a taco pie which turned out to be more of a mess than anything but it didn’t taste too bad. The recipe pretty much was just mixing to gather the ingredients into a "pie" and calling it dinner which was ok with me. I thought that it could have been better but it was quick and easy and that was the important part. To add a little to it, because it was rather bland, I added some hot salsa and some sour cream which made it taste a lot better. This is a good recipe to save though because if I ever need to cook for my sister when my mom is out I can use this because it is so plain. This can be added to the famous list of spaghetti or Mac and cheese meals to make for younger children. It called for

• 1 (8 ounce) package refrigerated crescent rolls
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 (1 ounce) package taco seasoning mix
• 1 (16 ounce) container sour cream
• 8 ounces shredded Mexican-style cheese blend
• 1 (14 ounce) bag tortilla chips, crushed

Sunday- Tonight I had my first time to cook for other people. My aunt and her boyfriend came over to dinner so they were able to test out my cooking. I made a few things but the main course revolved around steak, chicken, potatoes and a nice big salad. The steak and chicken were both cooked in a pan because it was raining outside and it just didn’t seem like a barbeque night. The chicken and the steak turned out fine but I used small potatoes which turned out pretty nasty though I think that is because they were rotten. They tasted a lot like strong vinegar and they were bad enough that you had to spit them out. Besides that though everything was a success and all of the food was eaten. That might suggest that next time I make a little more… I guess I’m not used to cooking for more than four people.

As an update to the garden situation, I have dug up the ground but I’m not sure that I am going to plant one. My grandpa came over and told me that because there are so many trees in our backyard there just isn’t a space that would receive enough sunlight.