My Cooking Expertise!

Caesar Potatoes

Italian Chicken




Raspberry Dream Cups

  So I was cooking today. I'm pretty proud of it actually...it turned out way better than the Greek meal I cooked awhile ago....let's just say things were a little crispy...
I made Italian Chicken, Caesar potatoes and Raspberry Dream Cups. I got all these recipes from What's Cooking? magazine. I love that magazine!! It all looks so good.....I'm the kind of person that needs pictures with a recipe. It gives me an idea about what it's supposed to look like, which almost never happens. And no, the pictures above are from the magazine and not what I cooked. They looked completely different.....at least the dream cups did. Haha. But my meal tasted delicious and I guess that's what counts!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! (Well I guess not everyone,,,,,the US for instance...) I love having Thanksgiving at this time of year! I'm almost positive that Canadians gain the most weight in this month because not only does it have the main meal, Thanksgiving, but also dessert, Halloween! So stuff your faces and be proud!! Well Thanksgiving at our house has always been a family affair. But since it's just my mom, dad and me and my brother, my mom bought a smaller turkey. When she was stuffing it she happened to accidentally break its back.......and now it's all floppy. A floppy turkey. So she did eventually get the turkey in the oven. Soon though we hit another road bump. I smelled smoke. I told mom to go check the turkey and a little bit of turkey had fallen out of the pot and onto the oven floor. It was sizzling and smoking and it almost started on fire. If our turkey had burnt that would have just been heart breaking. But no it didn't and I'm thankful! Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful mom's out there!
Me and my brother decided to make mom breakfast in bed for Mother's Day. Surprisingly, we hadn't thought to do that before....It went well except for the fact that mom heard the noise we were making and went to investigate. She figured it out but we told her to go back to bed so she did. I made fried eggs for the first time and well....let's just say they weren't quite top notch. Tyler made the toast (he was very proud). We also made her a bowl of fruit. We were just going to give her her favorite drink, Grapefruit juice but Tyler decided it needed a twist. I told him it didn't need any "twist" but he put ginger ale in the drink anyhow. Mom didn't end up liking the drink too much. I hate to say I told you so but I told you so. haha Basically, our little meal for her went well!

My Plan

So I have this idea that I'm going to cook supper sometime this week. Knowing my non-skills at cooking this could turn out really bad or really good. The recipes are easy enough. I got them from one of my new favorite websites, www.startcooking.com. :)
This website is packed full of easy recipes for all of us who are cooking impaired.
Well anywho, back to my master plan. I'm going to cook chicken fajitas, stuffed mushrooms, and chocolate fudge brownies! Mmmm....I presented all the ingriedients to my mom who keeps telling me "Oh, you won't need that" or "We can use this instead". Well, no mom. I'm determined to go by the book for this little cooking adventure. And just between you and me I'm going to check her list later just to make sure she didn't make any "substitutions". ;)

Making Jerky

Doesn't that just look good? haha.

We made jerky yesterday. It was way easier than I thought. Dad was so excited for this. It wasn't that big a deal but to him it sounded like one of the highlights in his life. We had started out with the 'original' flavour. (ooh, aah.) I've got to say it smelled delicious! Yum.
We packed the jerky cannon (sounds brutal huh?) and started squeezing. Dad was so worried that it would be way to hard to push out and 'only a man can do it'. HA! I showed him! It went out as smooth as butter!
And now it sits in our fridge waiting to be eaten. :)

Oh Wow.

Well this is so frustrating. The problem to my pie all along was so tiny and pointless.
I didn't let the pie shortening sit out and soften.
Yup, that's it. Wow, just wow.

Apple Pie

I speak from the heart when I say that I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this pie!
We had made apple pies in Home Ec and it went so well that I decided I would give it a whirl at home. Big mistake.
It was all going well until the pastry dough. (dramatic music) When I was blending it all up I noticed it wasn't as small of chunks as I would have liked. I thought "Oh well" and just kept trucking. So I peeled all my apples and sliced them. After that I took the pastry dough out of the fridge and started rolling it out. That was a huge problem. Everything that went wrong did! The dough split and tore so many times I had to keep re rolling it out. Eventually, the dough got too much flour in it and wouldn't cooperate at all. So luckily mom was there and assisted me in my time of trouble. I don't know how I did it in Home Ec. They must have magic counters or something.

Somehow, someway it turned out this good.

Baking Cookies!

I love taking pictures of cooking and I have no idea why! O well!

It took me about two hours to put all the ingriendients in a bowl and stir it. That's how I cook, slow and steady. In the end, the cookies turned out a little more crispy than I wanted but I blame it all on the timer. I tried for 10 mins or 9 mins or 8 mins but it all turned out crispy. Oh well. Anything below that was way too doughy. But then again I was eating the cookie dough so....

Baking Shortbread

My mom has finally gotten down to the baking part of christmas! It took awhile! My mom thought I was crazy for taking these pictures but I think they turned out pretty good. When we were making the shortbread we were using this psyco mixer!! If you turned it up a little shortbread would fly everywhere!! It was so crazy! After scrubbing dried on shortbread off the walls we figured out that the mixer actually can be controlled. Eventually we finished!