The Baked Ravioli was a success. My brother even said I could pass the recipe along to his wife – so I’m taking that as a compliment. The Chicken Wing Soup was also really good, I need to tweak it a little though. It came out sort of thick so I am going to try to make it more soupy. The little dude helped with the soup cooking. And by “helped”, I mean he sat in his bumbo and didn’t fuss too much – until his mean daddy decided to put a bowl on his head.
He wasn’t too impressed by that.
I got four cookbooks for Christmas and you have no idea how incredibly happy that made Dave. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was pretty psyched, but Dave really likes food and really really likes the idea of me trying new recipes. He’s a good guinea pig.
3 of the 4 books are slow cooker books, which is fantastic as far as I’m concerned. I love my crock-pot (not to be confused with Crock-Pot® which is a brand name, but is often used regardless of the slow cooker’s maker. It’s like Kleenex®, and Band-Aid®, and Rollerblade®). It makes things so much easier to be able to toss everything in when the little dude is napping, or happily entertaining himself gnawing on a spatula, instead of trying to get everything done an hour before when we want to eat. Especially since the crystal ball I use to predict what sort of mood his highness will be in is on the fritz.
I spent some time last weekend going through them and marking recipes I want to try. I even poked around on the internet to see what I could find. There’s a website out there where a lady made something different in her crock-pot, every day for a full year. Insane. I don’t really want to be that lady, but I have no problems stealing recipes from her.
Last night we had Cheddar Cheese Soup and Chicken Caesar Salad (I did not cook the salad in the crock-pot (not Crock-Pot® since ours is made by Hamilton Beach). Dinner was a huge success and incredibly simple. So simple that some people might not even call it cooking – they might call it just making soup and putting together a salad, but I call it cooking because it makes me feel more domesticated.
I bought a bagged salad, caesar dressing, croutons, and precooked sliced chicken. Mixed the lettuce and dressing together in a bowl, heated up the chicken in a skillet, tossed it and some croutons on top and it was done. I know, I know, precooked chicken?! Here’s a little known secret about me. I hate, hate, hate touching raw chicken. It gives me the heebie jeebies. And here’s a little known secret about that – it’s not really “little known” a lot of people know and my sister is the same way. I am working on getting over this phobia. I actually did cut up and cook raw chicken for tonight’s dinner (and I only had to stop to wash my hands like 5 times during the process – but more on that later). If I ever win the lotto I am going to buy all of my chicken precooked, or even better hire someone to do all the cooking for me! But that probably will never happen since I don’t play the lotto.
The soup was slightly more complicated. It started with 1 pint of hot water and 2 chicken bouillon cubes. I had to put them in the crock-pot and stir until the cubes dissolved. Then the recipe said to add two cans of cheddar cheese soup. This is where I ran in to difficulties. See, I didn’t have two cans of soup, because I didn’t read the recipe (all 3 ingredients, 4 if you count the water) closely enough. I had one can. Dave stopped at the store on his way home from work to help me out there (we needed milk anyway and he’s a good egg).
So anyway, you stir it all up and set the slow cooker to low for 1.5 to 2 hours. The important thing is not to let the soup boil. If the soup boils a pixie dies. Or maybe that’s every time a child says, “I don’t believe in fairies”. Whatever. I’m sure if the soup had boiled something equally tragic would have occurred. So I didn’t let that happen, not on my watch (you know what they say, a watched crock-pot never boils, ha ha ha – I am cracking myself up tonight). Right before we ate I added 3 tablespoons of cooking sherry and stirred it all up. It was really good. Definitely something we’ll have again. I think next time we’re going to experiment a little and add some potatoes or maybe some broccoli (probably not on the broccoli).
After my rousing success last night I decided to try making Orange Chicken tonight. The prep work came together nicely – and there were 8 ingredients involved! I was so proud of myself. I even “dredged” the chicken (which was raw and slimely and cut into bitesize pieces by none other than yours truly). And yes, I had to google “dredge” to see what the heck the recipe was talking about. Sadly, the end result was not that great. It was a little too orange-y for us. The first couple of bites weren’t bad but we liked it less and less the more we ate. So Dave ended up with leftover salad and soup and I had cheerios. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
Tomorrow night I’ll be attempting another new recipe: Baked Ravioli (again in the slow cooker). Hopefully we’ll have better luck there. Then on Friday night I’ll be tackling Chicken Wing Soup. It has 12 ingredients! Wish me luck.
This post is little dude approved.
Here’s a video of the little dude giggling and babbling. It’s not the best quality – I took it with my cell phone.
I know this picture is a little blurry (it was taken with my cell phone) but Adam is cute – even blurry. Lately we’ve been putting sneakers (thanks to Adam’s cousins for the hand-me-downs) on the little dude. The first time I put them on him he just laughed and laughed. He loves kicking his feet when they are on and trying to eat the laces. I like them because it’s the only way I can guarantee his socks will stay on.
He’s such a smiley happy baby. His adorableness almost makes up for the grossness that resulted in the stripped bed and extra load of laundry that day.
Almost.
It was really, really gross.
Be thankful I didn’t take pictures.
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Keeping a stocked diaper bag in the car so you don’t have to worry about forgetting it when you go out is a good idea…..unless it’s really cold out.
This public service announcement is brought to you by the lady in the Target restroom trying to clean up after a messy diaper with a brick of frozen baby wipes.
So one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to post to this website at least once a week. That means I need to get something up tonight – or else I’ll have already broken it. I am also going to try to do something called Project 365 – where you take a photo a day for a year. So far I’ve kept up with that (they are all still on the camera though). There have been two nights – tonight’s one of them-where the daily picture was of Adam asleep in his bassinet. I have a feeling that will be a common theme. The pictures won’t necessarily all be of Adam – however he is a pretty darn cute subject. (Edited on 1/12 – I gave up on this idea already. We’re too boring for a picture a day.)
The biggest new thing of 2010 is that my little man is sitting up by himself. He looks like such a big boy sitting alone and playing with (and by playing with, I mean gnawing on) his toys. I do have pictures of this (also still on the camera).
I also have a good reason for being such a slacker (other than my general nature and time-consuming 5 month old) – my laptop is doing this thing where the screen likes to turn black while you’re working on it. Of course I can fix it – all you have to do is close the top, open it again, wait a couple of seconds, close it again, and then open it again (good thing I have that engineering degree right?). The problem is the fix only lasts for about 2 minutes (not an exaggeration) before it starts all over again. So I am working on our really slow desktop – which is functional if a bit painful. Hopefully we’ll be getting a new screen put in my laptop soon and then I’ll have to come up with a new excuse. Until then though – I am considering Week 1 of this resolution a success. Happy New Year Everyone.
