A Cooking Reprieve

This past weekend, Samir was out of town again. That didn’t stop me from wanting to cook, though. After creating a delicious meal of spaghetti and fried ravioli earlier in the week (I adore fried ravioli), I was ready to embrace The Recipe Club again.

And then this happened.

That’s right, my pantry fell apart. The wooden shelves fell while I was out, leaving the floor a gooey mess. Two bottles of pasta sauce, oatmeal, tea, olive oil, and the Gin (from our gimlets!) opened up, so the floor was coated with a gross mixture underneath the boxes of now-destroyed food.

I wasn’t happy. And needless to say, I had a frozen pizza that night.

Thankfully, I saved a good majority of of the wreckage, and only stepped on glass twice. On Sunday, my dad helped me fix the wooden shelves and install a new one, so now we have more room and less of a chance of destruction.

I have plans to cook something fabulous within the coming days. Just you wait and see.

(Sorry for the poor photo quality – the images are from my iPhone).

Pesto Chicken and Pasta

Being Italian, I love pasta. I could eat it every night for a week (and, admittedly, I have). In college, it got so bad that my nutrition major roommate started buying me wheat pasta since it was a “healthier alternative.”

Earlier this year when I read The Sky is Everywhere (still one of the best books I read in 2010 – AMAZING young adult novel), I bookmarked a page that had a recipe for pesto sauce. Remembering this, I quickly grabbed the book this past Monday and decided to test out my new culinary expertise.

Once again, a few problems came up. We don’t have a food processor, nor a mortar and pestle, so instead of grounding up and processing all of the ingredients, I simply mixed them (and instead of using fresh basil leaves, I used basil seasoning). Also, we didn’t have any pine nuts, but according to research, that was okay. (I looked up similar recipes online to ensure that I wasn’t going to mess it up too much without the nuts).

While Samir cooked the chicken, I boiled spaghetti and mixed the called-for pesto ingredients in a pot over extremely low heat. Since it was quite dry, I added a bit more olive oil and my favorite when-in-doubt ingredient – butter. It usually works for baking, so I figured it would work here.

In the end my pesto chicken and pasta wasn’t that bad! I made Pillsbury garlic bread to go with it (okay, we could have made this from scratch too, but come on, I was making my own pesto sauce), which was very fluffy and nice. It was a bit dry tasting, the pasta, not nearly as creamy as I would have liked, but still – it was my first attempt.

The next day, I microwaved some leftovers and added additional olive oil and butter. To my delight, it tasted even BETTER.

I still love pesto, so I’m excited to make this again. Maybe next time with a food processor  – and the correct ingredients.

Mighty Math Muffins

Last Tuesday, a gubernatorial candidate visited my office and gave a press conference from the building’s conference room. For the guests and media, my boss bought TONS of muffins and drinks. For the remainder of the week, I had a muffin a day (…or more) and by Friday, I wanted to throw muffins off a balcony.

So it was kind of shocking when I really wanted to bake muffins this afternoon.

Since Samir is out of town, I didn’t want to make a huge dinner for just myself, but I still wanted to cook something. (While I do believe you can create a decadent dinner for just yourself, I’m far too lazy for such luxuries.) I went through The Recipe Club‘s recipes and came across the cranberry muffins. Perfect!

First problem came at Publix. Apparently cranberries are out of season, so they didn’t have any fresh or frozen. I opted for blueberries instead, since I really love blueberry muffins.

Next problem came when mixing the ingredients. While cooking, I had on the movie Almost Famous. I guess I was a bit distracted, because instead of putting flour into the mix…I put confectioners sugar.  I’m amazing. Thankfully, I only had two ingredients in so far, so I wasn’t too far in – and I didn’t waste too much. I hate waste.

After that, success!

I’ve made muffins before (okay, only pumpkin muffins, but still – those ARE the most delicious muffins in the world), but I was still impressed with how these came out. Honestly? Far much tastier than the ones we’ve been eating all week. They taste, well, real.

The blueberries are great, and I was especially surprised by the addition of lemon zest. It was just a bit, but it made a HUGE taste. Shocking!

I’ll definitely make this recipe again.

Kitty’s Phenomenal Pot Roast with Oven-Roasted Potatoes

I don’t know how some families do it. How does one prepare a beautiful meal every night? It’s impossible! Sure, we eat well at our apartment, but every now and then you know it’s chicken nugget and french fries night. That’s why we’ve decided that every weekend I’ll cook something decadent. I have the time – why not? So, tonight I made a pot roast from The Recipe Club recipe.

I’m not actually a huge fan of pot roast, but it sounded good, and Samir was really excited about it. The process was actually extremely simple. First, I cut up a bunch of vegetables.

Then, I made Samir clean and coat the beef (again – something simple, but I really don’t want to deal with raw meat quite yet).

While it cooked for OVER TWO HOURS I had enough time to catch up on My Boys. I forgot how funny that show is.

Okay – ding – it’s done!

Lovely (for meat), no?

I cant’ say it completely turned me on to pot roast, but I did enjoy it. The potatoes/onions/carrots were fantastic.

And, once again, we have enough left over for another dinner. I can’t think of any alterations I’d make to this recipe. Success!