Adventures in Cooking

I love, love, love to cook. I cook often, of course, for dinner, and I cook for my friends at least once a month. In the case of dinner, however, I find myself returning to the same recipes and meals over and over. Nik and I eat a pretty good variety of meals now (yes, even despite his eating issues), but we do tend to stick to the same main (pork tenderloin, soy sauce chicken wings, Italian sausage and pasta, chicken parmesian, homemade pizza) and side (green beans, rice, garlic mashed potatoes, corn) dishes and rotate them out. And in the case of First Saturdays, I have learned that it is a scary and dangerous thing to experiment with a new dish that day, so I try to make meals that I am familiar with. All this to say that I miss the excitement and experimentation of making new meals!

I have determined myself to purchase ingredients for a new dish each grocery shopping trip. I don’t go shopping every week, so this won’t generally amount to a new dish every week, but it will add novelty and fun to my kitchen adventures. I like the way I have oriented this goal–shopping for a new dish each trip instead of having to make one new thing each week. I think this keeps it more fun and less stressful. I have the ingredients handy until my schedule allows me to spend some time relaxing via cooking.

I first made ribs in the crockpot. Not an entirely new meal for us, as we do have ribs on occasion, but a new recipe and method of cooking. Nik is obsessed with BBQ sauce, so I knew this would be a hit for him as well. I thought, too, that this would be a perfect way to ease me back into cooking semi-regularly. How easy it is to do some prep work in the morning and leave dinner simmering in the crockpot all day, making the house smell great at the same time?

The ribs turned out alright. Nik might disagree with this opinion, as I believe he termed the meal “the best thing he’s ever eaten,” or something of that sort. The day I made these, I ended up turning a lunch with my friends Amy, Evan, and Caitlin into a glorious chat-, sun-, and ice cream-filled daylong celebration of spring. In other words, I was out of the house for longer than I had expected. Although the ribs didn’t cook any longer than the recipe called for, and in fact we pulled them out an hour or two early, they were a little scorched. It could have been the addition of brown sugar, or the type of BBQ sauce used, or maybe just too long in the crockpot, but I will have to tweak something the next time I make them (which will be soon, as we bought ribs again yesterday).

Next, I made a Stonewall Kitchen recipe for brie and fig and raisin chutney chicken. This was pretty incredible. I faced some challenges while undertaking this recipe, as it was my first time pounding meat, and it was really difficult for me to roll up the thinned chicken, full of goodies, into pinwheel shapes. Nik helped me out bigtime, and I witnessed his restaurant-owning expertise taking over here. He dealt with the chicken manipulation, and I got to enjoy the delicious, brie-oozing outcome. I will definitely be trying this one again, and hopefully I’ll become more experienced in dealing with raw chicken.

I currently have ingredients to make roasted pork and apples in the crockpot, but haven’t quite gotten to it. I may try that one out on Wednesday.

But today…I made a small exception and tried my hand at a new dessert item, rather than a dish. Have I mentioned yet the wonderful, indulgent items that Amy has graced our office with? A fridge and a coffee maker! I have noticed an increase in the number of hours that my office girls and I are spending at work, and we have really been enjoying fresh-brewed, noncafeteria coffee. Amy brought in some banana chocolate chip bread and I brought in some pumpkin bread last week, which were perfect snacks to go with our (multiple) coffee breaks. I decided to make another treat to bring in tomorrow–creamy coconut cupcakes!

I am really big on cupcakes, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever tried making them from scratch. I dug through my cupcake cookbooks until I found a recipe that looked really fresh, light, springy, and delicious. I ended up choosing these coconut yummies from the beautiful Cupcake Heaven cookbook. They were really fun and, slightly surprisingly, easy and quick to make, and they turned out deliciously! I hope it’s not tacky to bring in a cheated dozen cupcakes, because I just couldn’t resist helping myself to these cuties…