Week 8: Do Over

Recipes to Go: 507 433

Weeks to Go: 52 44

Recipes Made This Week:

Coconut Rhubarb Spice Cake

Tomato-Cucumber Mozzarella Salad

Gingered Chicken Dinner

Creamy Corn Salad

Spicy Sausage Wonton Stars

Pork 'n' Shrimp Spring Rolls

Mango Pork Stir-Fry

Peanut Butter Surprise Muffins

Motoring Munchies

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes

Artichoke Ham Puffs

Broiled Grapefruit

I had a conversation with someone at a baby shower a few weeks ago where I brought up my goal, as I am want to do, and she asked if I had had any dismal failures. I thought and said honestly, no because every recipe calls for normal ingredients and they are very easy to follow. Thus far, no problems.

But this week I've had to eat my words, and it hasn't always been tasty. The aftertaste is a little bitter.

I've had a lot of firsts this week. On Sunday, our Home Teachers came by for the first time. So I made dessert like I always do for Home Teachers, to encourage them to come by every month. I decided to make the Rhubarb Spice Cake. I was going to make it last week, but couldn't find any rhubarb. Well, I bought an abundance, chopped it, froze it, but left two stalks in the fridge for this week. So my inaugural rhubarb recipe might be the best cake ever. And I don't even like cake. I don't normally like coconut either, but it was sooo good on the top. Now I want to make this in cupcake form and take it to my Seminary class. I bet it would work for that . . .

Monday was the first day of Seminary, and I will blame that fact on the first food disaster of the week, the ginger chicken.

I didn't read the recipe in advance, like I should do the night before I cook, so I didn't read that I needed to marinate the chicken overnight. Well, that didn't affect the dish too much since half of the marinate is used to cook the rice in, but the problem was that we didn't have instant rice, and I didn't have time to cook rice first. Result - hard, chewy rice. Yuck. I definitely call a do-over with that next time I have cooked rice in the fridge.

Luckily the tomato cucumber mozzarella salad was really good.

Could have been the home-grown tomatoes, me thinks. It would have been better with fresh mozzarella, of course, but we make do.

Tuesday was the first time I've ever made food for a funeral. There was a big one in our ward and they asked everyone who could to make something. They asked on Sunday during our combined lesson on service-I couldn't say no. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to make one of the potluck recipes in the cookbook at full serving size. Sadly, I had to do some shopping to do this, so The Captain was stuck in the car all morning, then we rushed home for nap time. I cooked during that and afterwards, back in the car to the church. Poor kid was stuck in the car for too long. And that's why I don't have a picture of the salad. Nor did I taste it, but it looked really good.

We fed the Missionaries on Tuesday as well. Which meant that poor The Captain got home and didn't get any attention as I went straight back to work. I decided to have Asian night as a treat. It was my first time making Asian food besides curry, my first time working with Wonton Wrappers, and supposed to be my first time working with Bok Choy, but does any store in this entire county carry Bok Choy? No, they do not. And I had neither the time, nor The Captain the patience to drive 30 mins into town to pick up Bok Choy. Especially since I knew I was driving to town on Wednesday to take my friend to her doctor's appointment.

So we made do. And can I just say, an hour should be plenty of time to put together 3 Asian recipes, but alas it is not. Shrimp and pork are deceptively difficult to prepare. If I had chopped veggies at my disposal and everything pre-measured in little cups, then maybe. But 2 people in the kitchen and the missionaries arriving an hour before we ate led to chaos. Due to that chaos, and having to keep so many instructions straight in my head simultaneously, I accidentally put in 1/4 cup red pepper flakes into the stir-fry instead of 1/4 teaspoon. Luckily no one minded a little heat. And luckily pepper flakes can only take the heat up so high. It was hot, but not unbearably so. The bad thing was just that the pepper flavor overwhelmed everything else. Which means the mango and the delicious pork were all but in vein. So, do-over number two.

Thursday I actually did make the Gingered Chicken Dinner again, and while the rice was better cooked, as you would imagine, but marinating the chicken for 24 hours made it oddly juicy and slightly rubbery, so the texture was all off and it seemed raw even though it wasn't. So I guess third time will be the charm for this one.

And Thursday morning, I took the peanut butter muffins to Seminary for a treat. The surprise? Well, I 4x-ed the recipe and it turned out really dry. So the surprise was that they weren't as tasty as I was expecting. Okay, so the real surprise is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup baked into the muffin, which I will probably do differently next time, as well.

One of the few recipes that went well this week was the Motoring Munchies. Since we were driving to Kentucky to visit our family 6 hours away, I thought I'd take the time to make some travel mix.

This was made with good individual ingredients that combined really well together. Surprisingly so. It was a big hit, which was good because it made a ridiculously large amount. We used our biggest bowl and practically begged The Husband's sister to take some off our hands. Luckily it is good, so she was happy to oblige.

Apparently, all I was lacking this week was a sou chef because the breakfast-for-dinner we made on Saturday was back to the ridiculously delicious standards I've come to expect. The Lemon Ricotta Pancakes were a lot like crapes and rhubarb makes an excellent syrup.

Don't worry, my plate was never this empty again.

The Artichoke Ham Puffs might be the greatest gravy ever invented.

Sorry the picture is so far away. I was really hungry, so I didn't spend much time photographing.

And the Broiled Grapefruit is the only way to eat grapefruit. Plus it just looks so nice.

Three recipes was not nearly the disaster from earlier in the week with someone helping who was a) competent, which The Captain is not, and b) able to devote their full attention to cooking, rather than watching children, which The Husband is not. So extra thanks go out to the men that night for keeping all those hungry kids out of the kitchen temporarily.

And apparently I was also terrible at taking pictures this week, could have sworn I got a few of those . . . oh well. I'm sorry.