Legos and Bagels :)

Shane has been studying all the time lately, so today we decided to de-stress with some Legos. We made this house, complete with lawnmower, basketball goal, and apple tree in the yard. And this evening I made some bagels for Sunday morning breakfast :). I also made pizza today. I made the dough, used H-E-B canned pizza sauce, and we topped them with mozzarella and black olives. I thought it was disgusting, but Shane liked it. Notice a pattern here?? :)

Final Cake!!

Today, I graduated from Wilton Cake Decorating Basics. I even got a diploma! Here is my final cake. What do you think, should I open up Fluff's Cakes after September first, when the Baker's Bill makes it legal to sell homemade cakes? After I take Flowers and Cake Design and Fondant and Gum Paste classes, natch.

Pretzels!

OMG these pretzels were soo good! (I made them last night and I am already referring to them in the past tense because they are GONE.) I used the pretzel recipe from Joy of Cooking.

This week I totally lost my motivation to cook actual food. I am pretty sure this happens to everyone, so I'm trying not to stress that my cute little weekly meal plan complete with grocery list did not turn out the way I planned. I think even the best cooks should reserve the right to call "get your own" night. I did manage to get through the week with at least something on the table each night... My laziness led me to make a lot of eggs/breakfast for dinner and I ended up discovering that delicious hash browns are easy to make!

I also have a cake-in-progress. I am trying to use my cake for Wilton class for a party that we are having tomorrow for a friend's fiance who just moved to Houston AND finished the Bar Exam. We are making cakes decorated with roses tonight in class, so I made a yellow cake and iced it Tiffany-blue-ish and I'm planning to decorate it with some white roses. If that fails, I have a back up plan (cupcakes :)! Unfortunately, even if my cake does turn out it looks like the sky is supposed to fall here tomorrow because of Tropical Storm Don, so our party might be cancelled. In that case, maybe I'll use my renewed cooking energy to make that pizza I've been promising Shane :).

Cupcakes!!!

These are my cupcakes from Wilton class. We did some with "roses" on top and some with "shaggy mums." They are white cupcakes with white chocolate ganache filling. Yumm... :)

Tonight's Menu/Future Plans

On the menu for supper:

South Carolina pulled pork on a homemade bun with tangy cole slaw (from Joy of Cooking... I lost Nanny's recipe!). The pork is browned and in the Crock Pot, hoping to avoid Crock-Pot-grey color and taste. The Crock Pot is ON and PLUGGED IN!! Last night I redeemed myself with Alfredo sauce for our poor, lonely pasta.

Next Project:

Bread!! Pizza dough, sandwich bread, croissants, etc. Shane saw a pizza dough recipe in Joy of Cooking when I was reading last night and he wants to make Hawaiian pizza tonight, so we'll try that first. Joy of Cooking has so many awesome bread recipes and advice!

Flunk!!!

Woke up this morning planning on turning off the Crock Pot and storing my dinner for tonight (italian sausage and tomato ragu). The food that I slaved over last night at nearly midnight, browning the sausage and the vegetables and simmering the sauce on the stove. Carefully placing them in the Crock Pot and setting my oven timer for 8 hours... Fell asleep last night thinking yes, I turned it on, that would be so silly if I didn't turn it on! And now I am looking at my poor, sad, Crock Pot. Full of delicious RAW ragu. Poor, sad little plug hanging off the side of the counter but nooot quiiite in the socket. I unplugged it last night to move it toward the stove so I could spoon in the huge skillet full of sauce.

Uuuggghh.... Monday isn't starting out my way!!! Lessons learned:

1. When you are extremely sleepy and cooking, check everything twice (even things that seem obvious!) I even had my mise en place because I knew I was sleepy! I didn't forget any ingredients, but now they are all sitting in my kitchen having spent 8 hours in the temperature danger zone.

2. When you pour simmering liquid into the Crock Pot, feeling it to make sure it's warm doesn't work... You gotsta check and make sure it's actually plugged in and on!!

Okay, now laugh away. :)

Plans for the Week

This week is going to be Operation Crock Pot Attempt #2. We didn't run out of food last week, so I succeeded, technically, in meal planning. However, we weren't exactly enjoying what we were eating either. I am blaming my failure on the use of grody recipes from Real Simple. This week I'm going to try to redeem myself with recipes from Art of the Slow Cooker. I am already inclined to trust the author of the cookbook because I have already learned from the book

1. Never use water in a slow cooker recipe. Always use broth, wine, etc. or your food will be bland.

2. Always brown the meat before cooking it in a slow cooker.

Chef Mom has also told me both of these things, so this dude must know what he's talking about.

For tonight, I am going to make meat loaf and potatoes parmesan in two separate slow cookers. For tomorrow, I am going to make sausage and tomato ragu, and for Tuesday, I am going to make pulled-pork sandwiches. This time I am going to use Nanny's cole slaw recipe. Also to go with the pulled pork, I'm going to bake another batch of hamburger buns today. This will be my third time making them. The first time they were too small and tall, the second time they were too flat and big, so I'm hoping this time they will be perfect.

Cupcakin' it...

at Sur la table. Learning to make buttercream with Swiss meringue. Last time I tried it turned into a lumpy mess. Let's hope it works for me after this class!

I also picked up a candy thermometer (for making the meringue), a dough scraper, and a Wilton cake icer tip (a huge flat tip to put icing on the whole cake) with my 10% student discount!

Drumroll Please...

My first cake!!!

The cake was supposed to be blue and the cupcake was supposed to be white... So it looks a little Willy Wonka-ish!! But it's not nearly as terrible as I thought it would be. I may actually get good at this!

Did you ever wonder...

...what 5 pounds of buttercream frosting looks like?? This is about to go on my yellow cake with blackberry filling at Wilton class. (Curious to see how this combo tastes together.) I'll post pics pics if I can bear the shame!

Crock Pot Success... REVOKED!!

Shane and I had to throw out the squash lasagna leftovers. It was tolerable as a first time meal.... Not as leftovers. I have high hopes for next week's recipes!

Also, Shane is eating a pulled pork sandwich for dinner tonight and has already willingly eaten chicken noodle soup this week, so I think I'm still at 2 for 3. (For those of you who don't know, the only way to tell if this polite man likes my food or not is to watch whether or not he eats the leftovers. He will never say bad things about the food, but he will politely decline leftovers.)

Wielding a (Chef's) Knife

My Joy of Cooking wisdom for the day. I've been learning a lot from this calendar! Can't wait for knife skills class tonight. I want to know how to chop my veggies fast and even AND how not to cut myself.

I'm trying mobile blogging for the first time. :)

Operation Crock Pot... Room for Improvement :)

My pulled pork sandwich on a homemade bun today is delicious! The coleslaw recipe that came with it from Real Simple is a flunk. I put the coleslaw on my sandwich Southern style so I could still get my veggies though. I think Real Simple is not my favorite source for recipes... They are great if you want something quick, but if you are willing to put a little more work into the food I think it would taste so much better! So next week I'm going to try some more complicated crock pot recipes from my cookbook: The Art of the Slowcooker in the same style of this week. Recipes Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and leftovers Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This has worked really well this week! Each dish has made enough leftovers for another dinner and one or two lunches, and since I made 3 things and we're saving them all, we're not eating the same thing day after day or letting any of the veggies go bad before they're cooked. :)

Operation Crock Pot: 2 successes and 1 to go!

I have high hopes for my crock pot meal plan this week!! The first two recipes, while not awesome, have turned out totally edible and leftover-worthy!! We have ample serving-sized leftover containers in the fridge for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday night, as well as a few lunches for the week!

Last night I baked hamburger buns (for the pulled pork sandwiches tomorrow) and cut up carrots, celery, and onion for the crock pot chicken noodle soup. I put the hamburger buns in the freezer last night and this morning I just dumped the chopped veggies and the other ingredients into the crock pot right before work. I came home to our apartment smelling deliciously of chicken soup!!

I learned this today: if you are making chicken noodle soup, use chicken with bones in for more flavor! This recipe called for boneless, skinless chicken thighs, so I used that. Over the course of today (with my chicken noodle soup already happily bubbling in my crock pot) I learned from a good cook and a chef that you either have to use bones in or use chicken broth. This made our soup a little bland, but still yummy!

It's getting to where everything we eat is homemade. That's got to be a diet right? The all-homemade diet? I feel like that would work well to keep everything in moderation: you can only eat what you can make from scratch. I googled all-homemade diet and mainly found posts about pet food... Weird! As for me, I'm cool with eating delicious homemade food while my cats eat their Meow Mix. They seem to like it; they eat a LOT of it!

Recommended Recipe & Meal Planning

First, I want to recommend this recipe. It's the All-Bran Muffins recipe from the box. Before you judge (ew, fiber!) bake these and taste them! They are just sweet enough (sugar could also be replaced with Splenda and still taste yummy) and yes, they do have some healthy fiber! But it's all mixed in with white flour and oil, so I wouldn't consider them a health food exactly. The great thing about these is that they freeze well. This morning, I am baking 24 muffins and they're going to go straight into the freezer when they're cool. I put 2 per baggie, then in the morning or for a snack heat them up for 30 seconds. (Or put them in a lunch box and by lunch time they'll be cool but thawed.)

Prep Time: 20 minutes 
Total Time: 50 minutes 
Servings: 12

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1 tablespoon baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 cups Kellogg's® All-Bran® Original cereal

• 1 1/4 cups fat-free milk

• 1 egg

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil

Directions

1. Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Set aside.



2. In large mixing bowl, combine KELLOGG'S ALL-BRAN cereal and milk. Let stand about 2 minutes or until cereal softens. Add egg and oil. Beat well. Add flour mixture, stirring only until combined. Portion evenly into twelve 2 1/2-inch muffin pan cups coated with cooking spray.



3. Bake at 400° F about 20 minutes (today they baked for me in about 15 minutes) or until golden brown. Cool 10 minutes. Serve warm.

After these are baked I'm going to the grocery store to prep for my week of meals that I planned out. I decided against the Real Simple meal plan, because it would make too much food and most of the dishes wouldn't keep well as leftovers. So this week I'm going to try out Crock Pot meals, which I figure given their mushy and all-in-one-pot nature will make great leftovers! :)

I'm going to make squash lasagna today, chicken noodle soup tomorrow, and barbeque pork sandwiches Wednesday. Then I'm planning to serve the leftovers in that order: squash lasagna Wednesday, chicken noodle soup Thursday, and barbeque pork sandwiches Friday. To prepare, today I am headed to the grocery store to pick up all the ingredients for all three meals, as well as some side dish items (cole slaw and chips for the barbeque pork sandwiches). I'm also going to bake the burger buns today for the barbeque pork sandwiches and put them in the freezer.

I'll let you know if this attempt at a week of meals works! If so, maybe I'll even post the grocery list and recipes together :).

Homework!

This is my homework for Wilton cake decorating class. My school supply kit came with this nifty plastic thing with a stack of icing pattern flash cards. This one had stars on it that I iced over :). Now I'm waiting for the icing to set so we can scrape it off and eat it, hehe.

About Wilton class: I think it's going to be really fun getting to know the people in the class. There are a couple of other newlywed girls who are trying to learn to be more domestic like me, and there are a couple of parent/child pairs in the class.

The first class was a little disappointing because we went over step by step how to bake a cake ...from a mix... Yawn! A lot of the people in the class have no experience with baking. The teacher said that good taste and prettiness are mutually exclusive in cakes. This is not true. So clearly I tuned out the baking advice! For the first class we were supposed to bring plain cookies and I brought homemade ones and it made a stir! So for the week we bring cupcakes (since I love baking and can't imagine buying my baked goods to decorate) I agreed to bring enough cupcakes for me and the two newlywed girls and I made some friends. :)

I can't wait to show you my projects as I progress through the class! My cookies were too ugly to share, but I'll get better!

Homemaking 201: Intermediate Domestic Skills

I'm back!

Fact: Planning a wedding is more work than you think. Unless you've planned a wedding, in which case you know what I mean, girl!?!

Fact: When your husband is in nursing school you have a LOT of extra time!

Therefore: I am a girl with one BIG PROJECT done and ready to take on another adventure!

I have come to the following conclusion about learning to cook: It happens in phases. I started out a little over a year ago afraid of the kitchen... Even a simple chocolate mousse was a project for me, involving its own trip to the grocery store and intense concentration! The thought of that now is so silly! Item by item I am starting to understand why Mom says "Why would you buy that? It's so easy to cook!"

I am in a completely different place now than I was when I started. I am now pretty comfortable in the kitchen. I would by no means say I'm highly-skilled, and I still cut myself, burn myself, burn the foods, and make something straight up nasty on a pretty regular basis!! Although I have learned that some of these kitchen mishaps keep happening even when you are a trained chef, and that I can make good things most of the time!!

Shane and I have gone a while without a fully store-bought, packaged meal. Even if it's just something simple and partially packaged (like tonight: fettucini alfredo and a Central Market salad kit) we have been eating so much better! Oh yeah, and listen to that--fettucini alfredo is now "simple" to me (warm butter and cream over low heat, add parmesan, salt and pepper and stir until cheese is melted) and I tend to keep the ingredients around (whole wheat pasta, whipping cream, parmesan cheese, salt and a pepper mill)!!! I never thought I would be saying this!

About the phases: Now that total fear of the kitchen and domestic ineptitude isn't the issue, I am struggling with meal planning. I tend to pick a few recipes and cook them all in the beginning of the week, leaving us out of food by Thursday OR pick a few recipes and wait until Thursday to cook them, leaving us with rotten produce :(. I want to work on this! If it's hard for me now, I will flunk it if we have kids!

Now... What's next for The Blog Formerly Known as Abby/Betty (now know as "Abby Makes a Huge Mess and..." because I do!)?? I'm going to call this phase Homemaking 201: Intermediate Domestic Skills. The curriculum is as follows:

1. Wilton cake decorating classes!! Not exactly cooking, I know, but I am having to bake my unadorned cookies, cupcakes, and cakes to bring to class!! My kids are going to have awesome birthday cakes like I did.

2. Central Market cooking classes!! In which I will: address my fear of cooking fish, learn knife skills, and learn about grilling, among other things :)

3. Work on weekly meal planning. I am considering trying this four week recipe plan from Real Simple. The convenience of it is really appealing, and they have one that was published in October as well as the one in the link, which seems a little more summery. The drawbacks are the amount of food (I would have to half the recipes/not make them all/make sure it all made good lunch leftovers... which would undo some of the convenience) and some of the ingredients are scary! I have NEVER cooked fish (outside of the frozen fried filets from the Gorton's fisherman) and I am terrified of shrimp because it once gave me awful food poisoning! Thoughts??

I've got my work (fun!!) cut out for me! :D