Enter in my commitment to learn to cook: the youngest Gill girl, Michelle, has a food allergy. Basically she is allergic to the additives in highly processed food and it has made her sick for years. We have gotten it under control, however in order to take it to the next level for her health, and mine, I’ve got to take adulting to the next level and **gasp** learn to cook for real.
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| A few gorgeous views from the lake property. |
I have an obsession with Chrissy Teigans food posts on Instagram, so I decided to treat myself to her book. I’ve learned a lot and actually made some pretty decent meals. Recently we took a family day trip up to Lake Conner to my parent’s property. Since my parents have been so wonderful as to provide us this beautiful place to hang out I always feel it is my responsibility to cook for them when we are up there. This trip I got really ambitious and decided to prepare the majority of dinner the night before. Michelle was bringing two friends up with us and I did not want to spend a bunch of time in the heat cooking. Enter in Chrissy's Cheesy Jalapeño Bacon Corn Bread, and Creamy Potato Salad with Bacon, and even Mexican Street Corn (are you sensing a theme?).
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| Prep work the night before. Makes eveyrthing so much easier the next day. |
When I follow a recipe I tend to follow it exactly with no variations. Normally if I stray too far outside the lines bad things happen. Two of my side dishes called for bacon, and right from the start I decide not to follow the instructions to fry the bacon. Fry bacon? I have not done that for a few years now, my friend Tiffany (not to be confused with Karie’s significant otter Tiffany) told me about baking bacon. No more grease splatters on my stove, no more grease burns, seriously people it’s the only way to make bacon.
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| See how delicious baked bacon is?! |
What would my friend Chrissy say though? I’m not listening, I’m trying to learn but completely tuning out the teacher (oh so typical). I decided to run with it for now and do it my way, with less mess for my hubby to clean up later. Hopefully she wouldn’t be too disappointed in me. As a payback I decided to follow her instructions of how to boil and peel an egg exactly, since this has been an issue for me in the past. My eggventure (haha see what I did there) did not turnout as pretty as in the book, but hey I was just chopping them up so who cares that I ended up with a few divots in the egg whites. Not as many as I usually have so I would call this a success!
Over the course of the next few hours (yes, hours, did I mention I’m also a slow cook) I baked, mixed boil, chopped, sweated (it was 80 degrees in the house) and prepared a side dish menu I was proud of. They all looked beautiful and tasted even better. In the end I feel like my potato salad looked almost exactly like it did in the cook book and the corn bread was amazing. Over the course of the few hours I was cooking I elevated Chrissy from the level of new friend, to my new BEST friend because oh my lord! everything was awesome!
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| Creamy Potato Salad with Bacon |
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| Cheesy Jalapeño Bacon Corn Bread |
When we arrived at the lake and I was telling my parents about my adventure in the kitchen with my new best friend, my Dad looked at me like I had lost my mind, which is really nothing new in our world. He had no idea who or what I was talking about so I became a little nervous to let him eat what I had labored so hard to prepare. I was not worried about what Michelle’s friends would think because they are teenage boys and let’s be honest, teenage boys will eat just about anything. I served our hot dogs, hamburgers, and amazing side dishes, and everyone loved it! Dad decided maybe he should make friends with my new friend, which in my world is high praise. Hours of sweat and work paid off in successful Gill/Wendler dinner, everyone ate, laughed, and most of all we spent some quality family time together!
Oh yeah, I managed not to poison anyone!!
--Jennie
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