Month of Dinners Challenge - Day 1

For the first day of my challenge, I decided just to use up some things around the kitchen that were going to go bad.  I think I created a pretty good dish not following any recipe.  And most importantly, my family liked it, too!  Here's what I came up with:

Pasta with Brussels Sprouts and Tomatoes

Ingredients
1/2 box spaghetti
5 cups Brussels sprouts
2 cups cherry tomatoes, quartered
1/2 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup white wine
olive oil
salt & pepper
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Chop bottoms off of Brussels sprouts and remove any yucky outer leaves.  Place on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil to coat.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.  Mix with your hands.  Roast in oven at 350F for about 20 minutes, or until outer leaves begin to blacken.  (The leaves aren't burning - they are roasting and taking on a nice, sweet flavor.)
2. Meanwhile, cook pasta until al dente.  Set aside.
3. In a large saute pan over medium heat, melt butter and add onion and garlic until soft.  Add cooked Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, and wine.  Cook over medium low heat until wine begins to reduce.  Add pasta and toss to mix with Brussels sprout mixture.  Add Parmesan cheese and remove from heat.
4. Place mixture onto plates and serve warm!  Serves 4.

Month of Dinners Cooking Challenge

I love cooking good food and trying out new recipes, but lately I've become really lazy about cooking dinner.  I used to cook dinner every night and enjoyed developing my recipes.  However, we've been living with my parents to save some money and my cooking has kind of gone to the wayside.  My mom gets home from work and gets started on dinner before I even have time to think about what I would cook.  I'm not complaining.  I get to spend more time with my daughter and don't have to worry about getting to the store and planning a meal.  It's been pretty nice!  But, we won't be living with my parents forever.  At some point, I'm going to have to start cooking full-time again.  (My husband loves to cook, too, but since he works overnights, he is asleep until about 6pm.)

So, I thought that I could start a Dinner Cooking Challenge for myself.  I am challenging myself to cook dinner every night for the next month, until the end of October.  This means that I am going to have to be vigilant about meal planning and grocery shopping.  I'll have to make sure that when dinner time rolls around that I am prepared, organized, and ready to cook.  Most importantly, I'm going to have to find ways to keep my daughter occupied by herself while I cook.  I can see our gated-off living room directly for the kitchen, so that's not a problem, but Olive usually hates it when I'm in the kitchen and she's not.  She'll stand at the gate and scream at me until I come out.  So, I'll have to figure out a way for her to stay happy.

This face and the crying that comes with it is not fun.  Must figure out a way to keep her happy while I cook!

I'm a little nervous about this challenge, but I think it will be good for me in the end.  I'll be posting what I make each day as proof that I met my goal for the day.  Wish me luck - I'm starting tomorrow!

Chopped Challenge - The Finals!

In the past few weeks, we've had a few "Chopped Challenges" in my house.  First, it was my husband against my step dad and my husband won.  Next, it was my mom against myself and my mom won.  This past weekend, we held the finals: my mom Vs. my husband.  They both love to cook and were really looking forward to this challenge.  Earlier in the day, my step dad, Dan, and I went shopping for the mystery ingredients.  We had a pretty fun time shopping and think that we chose some interesting ingredients.  See for yourself!

The competitors:  My mom, Claudette & my husband, Jonathan.

The mystery ingredients:  Frozen sweetened strawberries, pastina pasta, Spam, fennel (anise), and falafel mix.  All the ingredients must be used in some way in the final dish.  Points will go for overall presentation, taste, originality, and use of ingredients.

Grinding some Spam in the food processor.  Ewwww....

Jonathan is finely dicing some Spam.  Onions have been sliced and strawberries are drying on a plate.

Diced Spam, parsley, parmesan cheese.  Meatball in the making?

No Spam for Olive!  She's feasting on kidney beans, sweet potato, and whole wheat English muffin.

The makings of a stir-fry:  fennel, red bell pepper, shredded carrots.

Falafel balls frying on the stove.  I love falafel but this particular brand had a really overwhelming cumin taste.    Probably won't buy in the future!

Cooked pastina, butter, parmesan cheese.  The pastina is so tiny, it ended up being kind of like a polenta.  It was actually pretty good!

The pastina pasta up close.  Tiny, tiny little stars.

My mom's version of pate.  Ground spam mixed with strawberries and spices atop crunchy bread.   It actually wasn't half bad!

Jonathan ended up making some spam-fennel-falafel....hmmm....meatballs?  He grilled them on the barbecue.  They really did turn out delicious.  

Claudette made mini daiquiris with the strawberries.  And we all know how a slice of fried Spam on the rim of the glass makes any drink better!  :(

Blended something with the hand immersion blender.  I really hope Spam isn't in there.

Claudette's final dish:  Falafel atop a bed of pastina with veggie stir-fry.  Spam pate on the side.   The orange stuff is tomato soup - she thought it would make a good sauce.  She was wrong.  Dead wrong!

Jonathan's final dish:  Pastina with fennel, Spam meatlogs, cabbage-fennel slaw.  Everything was really good except the pastina was kind of mushy and bland.

In the end, Jonathan ended up winning by 1 point.  It was a pretty close race!  And again, like in our previous challenges, we were all pretty amazed at what was created from some pretty strange ingredients!  I love doing these challenges because it really helps you to think outside of the box in cooking and come up with some new, really original ideas.  I think it's helping us all to become better cooks!