Green food for St. Patty's

Yesterday, Chris woke up with his cold being worse, and decided to just go to Sacrament meeting. He came home afterward to get some rest while I stayed and taught the music in Primary. When I got home, Chris had surprised me with lunch, where pretty much everything was green! We had green biscuits, green eggs, green hash browns, and green milk. Super yummy, and very festive. He's the best.

Also, want to know what true love is? Painting your wife's toenails when she's 9 months pregnant. They're super cool looking too. See?

(btw, it's not easy to take a picture of your feet with
your laptop when you're 9 months pregnant)

Lastly, Saturday afternoon/evening was quite the adventure. I had 9 1/2 hours of Braxton Hicks that were only mildly painful, but almost all 2-5 minutes apart. They didn't go away despite drinking water and laying down, or walking around, but they didn't get more intense either. We figured I was in the early stages of labor, or my body was just getting a lot of practice. Turns out it was the latter. Little guy's still in there, and looks like I'll keep my doctor's appointment today.

Cooking Failures Feel So Personal

As stated a while back, my cooking skills are... let's just say, "not great". Recently I've been trying to cook more often and try new things. Usually pasta is somehow involved  because Chris and I both love pasta, and it's really hard to mess up the noodle-cooking part. But I've learned that whatever else I'm making with the pasta can turn out really "dross".

For some reason, whenever it does go wrong, it feels so personal. Like the world is out to get me... or at least the food and the cooking appliances are. Shouldn't that chicken know that I was looking forward to eating something my taste buds would enjoy? Shouldn't that crock pot understand that when you turn it on low for 6 hours, you're not supposed to come home to charbroiled burnt-ness? Doesn't the food know that I have hopes and dreams of cooking grandeur, and by-gum, when the dinner I made turns out yucky it's just demoralizing?

I've heard lots of stories of women who made horrible food when they were first married, but I still feel defeated. You see, the joy I feel anticipating the yumminess I'll soon be eating is like a little girl who is dreaming of going to Disneyland, and then the sadness I experience when the food comes out gross is like finding out that you are never going to Disneyland. Ever.

Hopes? Dashed.
Dreams? Crushed.
Dinner? Blech.

Someday, I'm going to conquer this. Someday...

Grilling

So for father's day, I got Chris a little grill from Walmart. We tried it out later that week, and it didn't work so hot. As in literally, it didn't get hot enough to cook the patties. I was kinda bummed, but knew I couldn't have expected much from a little grill that was so cheap. Even so, I knew that Chris liked to grill things, and I knew that I liked eating grilled things, so I did some research.

I learned that one of the biggest problems was probably caused by our use of charcoal. The grill had come with some charcoal that said it didn't need lighter fluid because you just lit the whole bag on fire. Well, they didn't really light. So Chris pulled out the lighter fluid and got 'em cooking, but it never got hot enough. In my research I also learned that that little bit of charcoal was probably not nearly enough to cook the meat.

So on the fourth of July weekend, we decided to try it again, this time with Kingsford (not the inneffective brand of charcoal that came with the grill) and used a lot more briquettes this time. The result: some first rate burgers! My man can really cook, and those were some tasty tasty burgers.

Cooking

Last night I took a leap of faith in my cooking. As a rule, I don't cook very well. I can whip up some awesome Mac 'n Cheese (from the box), my microwaved baked potatoes are the best in town, and I've even attempted to make Yucatan chicken (kind of like taco salad, but with a tomato-ey chicken sauce instead of beef). But other than that, cooking stuff takes me forever. I'm a perfectionist, and I take a long time trying to make the food right. It's mightily discouraging when I spend all that time working and only come off with a mediocre dish. My husband is incredibly supportive and joyfully eats anything I make, but it's still disheartening to spend so long and have it taste so bland.

A couple of months ago, I realized that one of my problems was that I didn't know much about cooking principles. Things like, "If you boil chicken too long, it gets all tough and chewy," or "You're not supposed to hold the knife like your going to hack at something. Hold the blade itself." or "Margarine doesn't always work in place of butter... even though it's cheap." So I began to look for some help. I found it in two places: my good friend, Lee Spindler, and stellaculinary.com.

Lee has his own catering company and studied at Le Cordon Bleu (I think he studied at both the Paris and the Oregon campuses). He's a good friend of ours, and Chris and I decided to invite him over for dinner one day to help me us learn (Chris is really good at cooking, so he doesn't really need the help, but he still likes learning and we both like Lee). While making the meal he taught me us about the 5 french mother sauces: bechamel, veloute, espagnole, tomat, and hollandaise. He also explained about the different kinds of roux and how to make them, and made a veloute for our dinner. Since we were working with a master, it was divine.

A few weeks later I came across the Stella Culinary site and fell in love. Here. Finally were all of those cooking principles I wanted to learn. Podcasts, blog posts, vlog posts chock full of tips that I needed to know. As the owner of Stella Culinary says himself,

Before I started culinary school, I realized there were many books, websites and shows devoted to cooking, but very few ever teach you how to cook. Every one of them was “a pinch of this, a teaspoon of that, simmer for 20 minutes and it will be the best (fill in the blank) you’ve ever tasted. ”

For me, that just wasn’t enough. I had to know the whys and hows of cooking, and if it meant dropping $60,000 on culinary school so be it.

Wow. This was the site for me. The site is still growing, and the owner loves getting questions and ideas for what to teach. I'm in love.

So with these tools in hand and much encouragement from my hubby, I made a veloute yesterday. And you know what? It was pretty good. A veloute is made from a blonde roux (equal parts fat and flour) and then some kind of stock, and then you add what ever spices or things you want to finish off the sauce. Mine was made with chicken stock and then I added sun-dried tomatoes, some spices and a dash of lemon juice, and let it cook for a long time. I cooked some pasta and poured the sauce over the top.

Chris liked it. A lot. He even licked his bowl clean.

I think there's hope for me yet.