Abby/Betty Project Status: 28 down, 84 to go!

So, it turns out my original count of the recipes was wrong. I thought there were 105 but there are actually 112, so last time when I said 16 down and 89 to go, it should have been 16 down and 96 to go!

Here is a list of what I've cooked so far.

1. Chocolate Mousse with Raspberries (Yum!)

2. Strawberry-Spinach Salad (Yum!)

3. Buffalo Wings (Yum!)

4. Strawberry Shortcakes (Shane and I agree this is the best thing so far)

5. Guacamole (Yum! Say the nurses Shane works with)

6. Ham and Cheese Egg Casserole a.k.a. Egg Strata (Yum, although too salty because of preserved ham)

7. Fruit Salad with Lemon-Honey-Poppy Seed Dressing (Yum!)

8. Blueberry Muffins (A little dry, but apparently had perfect peaks!)

9. Lasagna (Yum! Probably the second best thing so far, and made the house smell good!)

10. Tirimisu (Yuck!)

11. Italian Salad with Garlic Lemon Vinaigrette (Double Yuck!)

12. Garlic Bread (Yum!)

13. Apple Crisp a.k.a. Apple Betty (Yum, although had too much nutmeg)

14. Lemon-Dijon Baked Chicken (Yum!)

15. Garlic Smashed Potatoes (Need work)

16. Cooked Carrots (Yummy, simple, and fast!)

17. Meatloaf (Yum!)

18. Mashed Potatoes (Masterpiece)

19. Green Beans (Yum! Bacon makes things taste good.)

20. Outrageous Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies (Yum!)

21. Oven Fried Chicken (Good, but a little dry)

22. Macaroni and Cheese (Good, but weird recipe with onions)

23. Broccoli (Yum!)

24. Spinach and Chicken Stuffed Pasta Shells (Pretty good)

25. Roasted Garlic (Pretty disgusting)

26. Beef Pesto Panini (Yum! Fancy Grilled Cheese)

27. Veggie Focaccia Sandwiches (Made with ciabatta instead-Yummy and healthy!)

28. Ranch Pasta Salad (Haven’t tried it yet!)

My goal is to finish this project by our wedding day, May 21, 2011. That gives me approximately 9 more months, which is still about 10 recipes per month. I am on still on track to finish! And I think I'm a little ahead, which is good, because somehow I don't think there will be time to cook in the few weekends before the wedding!

Pasta Salad with Lemon Pesto Dressing

This is a recipe for a delicious pasta salad that I had at Shane's parents' party. It's kind of like a caprese salad, but with pasta. This makes a great lunch or light dinner! Yum. :)

Pasta Salad with lemon pesto dressing

1 pound of cavatappi or your favorite pasta (shells, corkscrew)

1 cup of basil pesto

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 cup of grape tomatoes cut in half

4 scallions, chopped

20 fresh basil leaves, snipped into strips

1 lb tub of mozzarella balls (HEB has them in cheese section)

Boil a large pot of water and add salt and pasta when it is boiling. While pasta is cooking make dressing with pesto, lemon zest, lemon juice, tomatoes, scallions, basil, and cheese in large bowl.

Drain pasta and rinse with cold water and drain well. Add to dressing and toss. Season with salt and pepper.

Super-Duper Vegetable Weekend!

I have been craving lighter food, like delicious salad and veggies, lately. I picked three recipes for this weekend, all of which are rich in fresh veggies. Today's recipes were Veggie Focaccia Sandwiches and Italian Pasta Salad (But I made Veggie Ciabatta Sandwiches and Ranch Pasta Salad instead).

1. Veggie Focaccia Sandwiches- Super yummy! To make these, I caramelized onions, yellow bell pepper, and orange bell pepper in Sass brand balsamic vinaigrette. Yum! Personally, I could eat caramelized onions and veggies on their own, and the balsamic vinaigrette gave them an extra tang/sweetness that made them even better. I put this on ciabatta bread, sprinkled it with fresh basil and shredded mozerella, roma tomato slices, and then put the rest of the ciabatta bread on top to complete the sammy. Shane liked these, too! This made four sandwiches, so I saved the extra two in the fridge and I'm planning on heating them back up in the George Foreman grill panini style tomorrow, so the bread will taste toasty instead of stale and the cheese will melt on the veggies.

Our H-E-B has an awesome bakery! You can even talk to the baker. I asked him if he had any focaccia, and he said he was going to start making it next week. Thus the ciabatta, which tasted yummy anyway, but I'll have to make these again with focaccia one day.

2. Italian Pasta Salad (I substituted H-E-B Buttermilk Ranch for the Italian Dressing)- Pasta Salad is one of my very favorite foods. Especially when it has extra goodies besides pasta, like olives and tomatoes. For this pasta salad, I cut up green onions, half a cucumber, a tomato, and a red bell pepper, then added ripe olives. We haven't tasted this yet, because it always tastes better after you let it sit in the fridge for a while. We might bring this to a barbeque we're going to later, but I'll have to see how Shane feels about that. Sometimes he's not too keen on me letting other people eat all the food I make! I will update tomorrow on whether or not this tasted delicious. At any rate, it felt good to eat a bunch of fresh veggies today, because when I'm not cooking we still revert to our not so great diet of pizza, Beenie Weenie, etc.

Coming up this weekend: Greek Salad, a pasta salad recipe I got from one of Shane's parents' neighbors, and an update on overall Abby/Betty progress.

Last day off!

Today is my last day off, and I'm enjoying it immensely! I got a bunch of errands done and now I'm chilling out with Animal, about to read more of Cutting for Stone. This book is wonderful so far, so wonderful that I may just read My Own Country next. I guess along with my love for medical TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Scrubs, House, Hawthorne, etc., comes a love for medical literature. It must be genetic! And speaking of Animal, doesn't it look like she's rocking a tiny furry Ugg boot since her leg fur hasn't grown back yet from her IV? Hehe.

A few minutes ago I made Roast Beef Pesto Paninis using our new George Foreman Grill that Shane's parents gave us. It was really easy to use! You'll see a picture of me trying to read the directions (I always do) before figuring out that you just plug it in, it gets hot, and then you cook things on it. The Roast Beef Pesto Panini tasted like a fancy-schmancy grilled cheese! In a good way. The french bread I bought from Randalls was really good even before I coated it with Brummel and Brown and toasted it in the George Foreman Grill. It was buttery and flakey and delicious! One day I want to learn to make my own bread for sandwiches, but for now I was happy to make a fancy grilled cheese.

My plan for the cucumber salad fell through, because upon removing the cucumbers I purchased last week from the refrigerator, I discovered a pickle-like smushy texture and an unexplained brown liquid in the bag. Oh well! I guess that's just Betty telling me to stick to Betty for now!

New Job!!

So you may be wondering what the eff I've been doing lately instead of cooking. In addition to getting a new cat and visiting the Woodwards (including Eddie, Billy, and Jane) this weekend, I got a new job! I have been super busy with interviews, then new employee stuff. I am starting this Friday! :D

I had my last day at my government job this past Friday (see picture of my cake attached). I will now be working at a hospital as an infection control practitioner! The people at my old job gave me a really sweet goodbye, complete with many well-wishes from coworkers, a speech from my boss, kind words from my boss's boss, his boss :), and a cake and punch reception put together by my coworkers. It's sad to leave all the people I've met, but so great to go on to a new adventure!

To prepare for said new job, I decided to take a few days off this week, so I have been relaxing and getting some things done. This has included getting Annie spayed (she's doing fine now! see picture attached), cleaning out my closet (bye bye, 5 bags of unwanted clothes and box of unwanted shoes!), and getting a haircut and a pedicure (please disregard the squalor that is my desk. had to start somewhere with the cleaning!).

I started my first job the day after finals, literally the next day after I had been studying and taking finals all week, with no break. This led to me wearing the last clean outfit in my closet and trying to style a haircut I was so over but hadn't had time to get cut since I had been in grad school. Needless to say I hated my ID badge photo. I highly prefer the take a few days off route. The house is cleaner, my hair is prettier, I have even had the time and energy to exercise, and I still have two more days to go! One of which I will spend cooking the Abby/Betty food that I didn't get to cook on Shane's birthday.

Tiny Annie and non-Betty recipe

This weekend we adopted a cat! Thus the lack of Abby/Betty food prepared. We named her Animal, Annie for short. We thought she was a kitten (she's super small, so I thought she was maybe 3 months old). We took her to the vet today for a checkup and to get her shots, and it turns out she's 10-12 months old! She's just a tiny girl! This should be quite humorous, given that our other cat, Frankie, is about the size of a golden retriever puppy (huge!). See pictures of their first meeting here. Annie is still not a fan of Frankie, but he's growing on her. She has moved from growling and hissing to just a small growl on the sight of him.

This weekend I also took a painting class at Pinot's Palette. Natalie, Jen and I painted a variation on Van Gogh's Starry Night. Mine looks a little like a 3rd grade art project, but it adorns our bedroom wall nonetheless! We will be back soon to paint a martini glass, which I hope will look good on our kitchen wall.

Tomorrow is Shane's birthday, and I am going to continue with some Abby/Betty activities. Along with Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Butter Recipe Golden cupcakes (Shane's choice) and Wilton Buttercream Icing, I am going to make Roast Beef and Pesto Paninis with our new George Foreman grill and this Cucumbers Vinaigrette recipe that I found in the New York Times. Hope he likes it!

Not Spectacular, but Pretty Good. Roasted Garlic and Spinach-and Chicken-Stuffed Pasta Shells

Today I made Roasted Garlic and Stuffed Jumbo Pasta Shells. I had never heard of or seen jumbo pasta shells before. They are crazy! The stuffed pasta shells recipe was fun to make, but I wouldn't order it at a restaurant because it involves a lot of preparation steps... A lot of room for food-safety error! Anything stuffed kind of sets off my foodborne illness questionnaire alarm! These were really delicious though. I started with a Rotisserie Chicken from H-E-B (yummy all by itself!) and chopped it up, mixed it with an egg, ricotta cheese, spinach, and parmesan cheese. Then I stuffed the noodles with the mixture and layered it with H-E-B Marinara Pasta Sauce in a Pyrex dish. I baked it for 45 minutes with tin foil, then added 2 cups (an entire bag!) of italian blend cheese to the top and baked it for 10 more minutes to melt the cheese. The result was a delicious, kind of lasagna-like dish. Well, chicken lasagna. This will make good leftovers!

Okay, so I guess I went with the good news first. The roasted garlic was not good. It was pretty though! I think I may not have cooked it long enough. It was not completely tender when I poked it with a fork once I had taken it out of the oven, but I had already unwrapped it and put the other dish in the oven, so there was nothing I could do! This recipe was a whole garlic bulb, cut to expose the cloves, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Once it's baked for 45 minutes you're supposed to be able to squeeze the garlic cloves and spread it on baguette. The cloves didn't really develop a "spreadable" quality though. Also, they tasted like plants! I think this recipe might be good if the garlic were cooked longer and coated with butter instead of olive oil. Shane and I didn't like the garlic mashed potatoes either though, so there's also a chance that we just don't like garlic!

Sorry for the delay!!!

I am sorry I haven't posted this week! I did cook some Abby/Betty recipes that were fairly successful. I also had a LOT going on this week, but more about that later! I didn't take any pictures of my food this week (like I said, a lot going on so I was distracted!) but I did take pictures of my new dinner table setup. Mom and Dad handed-me-down their Williams-Sonoma dining room table a while back, but until now we had mainly been using it as an extra desk due to the lack of real sit-down meals we cooked. So on a shopping trip with Mom, I bought some Williams-Sonoma placemats and napkins that match with our green Fiestaware and our red diner chairs! I'll also throw in a picture of a Houston sunset from our apartment.

Okay, now for last weekend's recipes:

1. Oven-fried chicken: For this recipe, I shook up drumsticks in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and paprika, kind of like Shake and Bake, then cooked them in the oven in a pan full of butter! This made for some pretty yummy chicken, but it was a little dry! I think I'm still a little afraid of undercooking the chicken, so I may have cooked it a little too long. Shane really liked this though, and we ate it again as leftovers, which is always a good sign!

2. Macaroni and cheese: This recipe was a little weird, because it had onions in it... I'm not sure how I feel about onions in my mac and cheese! And after this recipe, I'm still not sure about it. To make this, I cooked onions in a pan, then added flour, salt, and pepper, which kind of made it look like onion rings! Once that was all cooked, I added Velveeta cheese until it made a creamy sauce, added that to the cooked macaroni, and baked it. It turned out pretty well, but it was really rich! You just can't go into it expecting Kraft mac and cheese! This could be a meal in itself.

3. Broccoli: I LOVE broccoli. It's my favorite cooked vegetable! And between it turning olive green, being too firm or too mushy, and being seasoned strangely (spicy broccoli? yuck!), there are many ways to screw up cooked broccoli. I was proud of my broccoli! I cut it up and boiled it in salted water, then added Brummel and Brown while it was still hot and mixed it up. Even Shane, who eats veggies more as a matter of duty than as something he enjoys, liked this broccoli. Ah, the power of butter! (And butter-flavored yogurt or whatever Brummel and Brown is)

So, last week was pretty successful! Today I'm getting ready to go to the grocery store, and I still don't know what I'm going to make. I'm considering the Stuffed Jumbo Pasta Shells though, because I didn't know those existed and I found some last week at H-E-B. I'm intrigued!