Challenge Week One

I started out the week with the intention of prepping a whole bunch of breakfasts and snacks. Let's just be honest and admit that did not happen.  So this week I am winging it, and hoping for the best.  I did make sure I planned ahead and have enough groceries for all the dinners I have planned. 

I did want to have some breakfast left overs, so I decided to try Chrissy Tiegen's French Toast Casserole.  I was excited because what is there not to love about a casserole that has rum in it?  Yes please! This was really quick to prep, but I wish I had read the instructions earlier.  I knew it had to set in the fridge for a few hours, but I didn't realize it was 12 hours!  So I switched this from a breakfast to a dinner.  Another lesson I learned was to read the instructions completely, and then plan ahead don't just skim.  I also made candied bacon to go with it, super easy, just brown sugar and black pepper.  You mix it in a baking dish and press the bacon into the mixture then bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Sunday after we ate breakfast the kids and I decided to head up to my parents property at Lake Conner.  We did a quick Safeway stop to purchase hot dogs for lunch and then we spent the day in the sun relaxing after a long week at camp.  When we got home I was not in the mood to cook and I was already regretting this whole idea of mine.  However I powered through and decided to make the Pioneer Woman's Sloppy Joes from her website.  They are fast to make, and are also Michelle friendly without all the additives of using a spice mix or a canned sloppy joe sauce.  In my hunger I forgot to take a finished picture, but I'm sure you all know what Sloppy Joes look like, just know they are super yummy. And Jason Approved!

Day two was hectic as usual and I was trying again to talk my self out of cooking.  Monday is Jim's day off and I went over the meals I had planned for the week and he asked me to make the enchilada's I had planned.  I started making the sauce from scratch which was much easier than I thought really start to finish took me about 15 minutes.  Last week I had pre-shredded some chicken which came in handy with an unexpected phone call from Karie saying they were trying to figure out what to have for dinner.  I took the second bag out of the freezer, and ta da I had dinner for 6 with leftovers for lunches later in the week.  While they were baking Gavin and I ran to the pool to pick up Michelle from swimming.  I asked Jim and Karie to put the cheese in the shredder on the enchilada's....  Well you can see what happened yourself.  Day two completed and still going strong!

 Day three done!! I have to be a child and say naner naner boo boo, Jim cheated first!!  He went hiking and stopped and Jack in the Box on the way home.  He said it doesn't count because he had money from last week in his wallet, but no way man!  He caved before I did, I feel like that is a major accomplishment. 

So on with the day, I made pancakes and bacon for dinner no biggie. I decided to make some cookies, I have not made chocolate chip cookies in probably 15 years, but in the interest of adulating I decided to tackle it.  I read a lot of different website's and decided at the end of the day to try the Pioneer Woman's chocolate chip cookies.  I don't know where these have been my whole life, she has you brown the butter and let me tell you it was like heaven in a bowl.  Did you know that if you brown butter it starts to smell nutty?  I don't know how or why, but it adds a butter scotch flavor to the cookies that is amazing.  Everyone should try it!



I wish I could give you all a cookie, but by the time this comes out they will all be gone. 

Wednesday night was the best night so far, I didn't cook, I didn't buy dinner, and I didn't cheat.  Karie and I went to the Des Moines farmer market.  I was really cute only a few vendors on a Wednesday night, but there were food trucks.  Dinner was on Karie, and I had a night off.  Yeah!!

Thursday nights dinner was a major Pioneer Woman fail; I know shocking!  I was so excited to make grits and stewed beef, but it was too spicy for us buy about a million.  It was crazy, crazy, hot. next time I would recommend adjusting the spices.

Friday night we had breakfast for dinner -scrambled eggs nothing exciting.  The most important thing is I made it through an entire week without buying food out to dinner or lunch!  It was awesome and I am really proud uf us.

Gill Family Challenge

We have been looking for ways to cut back some in our monthly budget.  One of the ways we can save I think is by not eating out.  With all the time I spend in the car driving around plus working 55 hours a week, most of the time eating out is easiest.  Cutting back on eating out is one of the reasons I wanted to start cooking at home.  So I have gotten my hubby to buy in since this effects him too.  Here are the rules:

1.  No eating out from July 18 - August 18 EXCEPT one date night for Jim and I and one family night out to dinner.

2.  No going to the grocery store and buying a prepackaged dinner's when we don't want to cook.

3.  No lunches out, unless someone else who does not live in our house is buying.

4.  No IOU's for lunch or dinner out to be paid back after 8/18.

5.  No Starbuck's for 30 days.... The ultimate sacrifice for me!  (Gulp)

I feel like this means I need to spend a week eating out.  What this really means is I need to spend a week preparing.  I have to replace my favorite breakfast sandwich I normally buy at Starbucks with a yummy homemade sandwich.  I need to make sure I have plenty of lunch supplies and meals planned with leftovers so I'm not tempted to run out and grab lunch.  Dinner's and dinner prep will have to be done way ahead of time so I can make meals fast when I get home.  Yikes thinking about this is really overwhelming, and I should probably mention that Michelle is firmly set against this idea.  However I feel like if I am really committed to learning to cook and meal prep then I should fully commit for a month to force myself to get into the habit.

Anyone want to join us on this adventure??

Sriracha What? Cheesesteak Hey!

Who doesn't love a great sandwhich?  I love making them they are fast, easy, and yummy! First I need to clarify by fast for me it means anything that takes less than an hour to make.  I would love to master the art of 30 minute meals, I try so hard but anything "fast" takes me at least 45-60 minutes.  My knife and prep skills are that bad, hello America's Worst Cooks.

My cooking adventures started this week started with the Pioneer Woman's Pawhuska Cheesesteak's.  Onions, good! Peppers, good! Roast beef, not necessarily one of my favorites, but I was up for the challenge! 

I've been working on being better with a knife, let's just say it's a work in process.  I was pleased though that at the end of chopping for the most part everything was the same size.  Cooking accomplishment, baby steps right??!!  

I'm getting better and better at sautéing, and I am starting to enjoy the process.  I hardly ever burn anything anymore.  Now before my family chimes in I said hardly.  We discovered Kerry Gold butter last year, despite what you might have been told I did not buy it because it's Irish, I bought it because it was on sale.  It tastes so good I can never go back, I have bricks in the freezer, fridge all over.  Look at the beautiful butter and spices, almost like I know what I'm doing....

Of course being the good student that I am, I did not cook everything in the correct order, whoops, sorry Ree! I promise I do do try to do it the way you say.  I cooked the beef, it's looked beefy, and dinner looked promising.

Now the cheese sauce. I could write an ode to this sauce it was amazing!  It was ewey gooy cheesy deliciousness....  I did have to make a substitution in the sauce, she called for Velveta Cheese, but I substituted Montery Jack.  Again with Michelle's EE (eosinophilic esophagitis) overly processed foods make her sick so I googled substitutes and we had a winner!  *Sigh* I forgot to take a picture so you will just have to admire it in the final picture.  Stay tuned....

I also decided to make the Sweet Potato Fries Karie had been raving about.  I was so excited to make them,  quick prep time yummy side dish it would be easy right??!!  Hmmmm maybe for the average cook, but it took me FOREVER to peel and slice the potato's.  It was a labor of love for my family, I worked so hard, only to be told Jim and Michelle don't like sweet potato's.  Oh well their loss was my gain.

Now your probably reading this wondering what does this have to do with Sriracha?  Let me tell you about my friend Ree's fry sauce. I have never ever tried Sriracha.  I've seen it on tables and at the store but I have never tried it.  Frankly I thought it looked funny, and unappetizing. The guy at Whole Foods assured me this was not the case, and directed me to his favorite brand.  He did tell me to be careful it was an extra garlicky version, and I thought it can't be that bad, it has garlic.  I learned something Mayo + Sriracha = Heaven. It was amazing, I can't wait to find more uses for it in the future.  

Apparently I should have payed attention to the directions and turned the fries, they got a little brown, but the end result was a dinner I was really proud of.  Gavin had some left overs a few days later and gave it his seal of approval also.  Didn't I tell you the cheese sauce looked amazing?

Jen

From our family to yours....

Happy 4th of July, thank you to all who have served, we appreciate your sacrifice.

We decided to have a family night at home.  The origional plan was leftovers, but I decided to make burgers, sweet potato fries and monster cookies.  It wouldn't be a holiday without something from the Pioneer Woman's website.  Pizza Burgers sounded delisious so I went for it. 

In the interest of full disclosure raw meat freaks me out and I will do just about anything to avoid it.  Thank goodness it does not bother Michelle so she basically made dinner.  It was so easy and fast; hamburger, sausage, cheese, pepperoni, mix, cook.  

  

We threw it in the BBQ, and dinner was done.  The fries turned out much better than last time.  I had Karie turn the fries 1/2 way through it made all the difference.

    

Monster cookies are one of my favorites to make they are pretty much Jennie proof.  It's a basic cookie dough but then you add oatmeal, chocolate and peanut butter chips, M&M's, and (can you believe there is more) Rice Krispies!!  They are easy and soooo good with a glass of milk.

    

Holy Delisiousness!!  I love the experiences I am having learning to cook thank you all so much forfollowing along with us!     

Whoops! Indestructible Baked Ziti

 

I meant to write this post earlier in the week, but as some of you know I traveled to Dallas for a training class.  I am a little behind on my posts, however I am looking forward to being home this weekend and doing some (dare I say it) meal planning for next week.  The week before Dallas, Jim, Jason, Michelle and I traveled to Disney World. We had so much fun and I got to hang out with my brother and April for a day!  When we got home form Florida, all I wanted to do was cook a meal since we had been eating out for a week 3 meals a day, and I was leaving the very next day for Texas.

Instead of using my handy dandy cookbook, I opted to do a fast search of the Pioneer Woman's website for a fast pasta meal.  I needed a make ahead meal since we had a graduation party to attend earlier in the day, and Jim was going to have to put dinner in the oven. 

The Pioneer Woman's Baked Ziti looked pretty easy and had step by step instructions for the homemade marina sauce to go with it.  This was a win win for me, since I need to make as much from scratch as I can due to Michelle's allergies. 

I started in making the sauce, cooking the onions and garlic.  Now here I go again not listening to my favorite mentors, but I used one of my favorite shortcuts.  I am not very good with a knife, I've watched America's Worst Cook's enough to know my knife skills alone could land me on that show!  Whenever a reciepe calls for minced, chopped, etc garlic, I always use my handy short-cut: preminced.  At Whole Foods and Trader Joe's you can buy preminced garlic in the frozen food section.  Each square is equal to one clove of garic, and a bonus is it costs the same as fresh garlic.

Frozen garlic from Trader Joes!

Whole Foods makes amazing sausage, and every chance I can I buy it fresh when I am cooking.  It is so much better than the frozen alternatives or even the kind sold pre-packaged at the grocery store.  It's made fresh in store with no preservatives which means it is Michelle friendly too.

 

While I was busy with the sauce I decided to put Michelle to work (especially since her boyfriend was coming over for dinner).  She made the filling which was a standard lasagna filling of egg, garlic, parsley, cheese, and ricotta cheese.  She always feels accomplished when she makes dinner which I love.

I also had her make my homemade garlic cheese bread.  Very easy to make, its extra cheesey, and much better then the normal garlic bread in the foil bags. It's simple to make, 1 stick of butter and cream cheese softened, I used 6 cloves (squares) of garlic, and one cup of mozzarella cheese.  Mix together and spread on a loaf of French bread.  Easy!  Sometimes I do a variation on this and will add Cajun seasonings and jalapeño's depending on what I am making for dinner.

 

 

Once the sauce was done and the ziti noodles had cooked assembling the dish went really fast.  1/2 the sauce and all of the noodles get mixed together, you put it in a baking dish and put the rest of the sauce on top.

 

Now, we had a slight issue in communication with Jim cooking everything.  I told him I was leaving the graduation party around 5:15 to run an errand and pick up Michelle's boyfriend.  My intention was to have him turn on the oven around 6.  What he heard was turn on the oven at 5:15.  Whoops!!  So the bread ended up way over cooked, however it was nice to know the baked ziti was virtually Jim and Jennie proof, and still turned out amazing despite the cooking snafu.  I forgot to take a picture of that but I did snap one of my over done super crispy bread, if you use your imagination you can see how it should have looked and drool.

Until next time! --Jennie

Am I Southern yet?

I love biscuits and sausage gravy.  I order it all over the place, breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I can't get enough of it! I've never been brave enough to make it myself.  It always seemed a bit intimidating.  Let's be honest I always felt the that there was no way I could make flaky wonderful delicious biscuits.

When you read the recipe for Buttermilk Biscuts with Sausage Gravy and a Maple Cream Sauce it seems easy enough, which of course made me instantly suspicious.  There is no way something that yummy could really be that easy.  

Honestly the night I made this I was feeling overwhelmed, and I was running late.  I had to call everyone and ask them to come over later because I was not going to be ready.  So with a super high stress level I jumped into making the Buttermilk Biscuts.

Making the Biscuts was a lot easier than I thought it would be, and not nearly as messy.  Everything was clearly layers out in the step by step instructions, however do not make the mistake I made and when Chrissy says flour your hands before kneading the dough, listen to Chrissy.  My hands were a mess, but I ended up with a flaky success!

While the Biscuts were baking, I made the sausage gravy which is as so easy!  Why on earth was I ever scared of this?  I was so proud that I did not even scald the milk!  A side note I would use a lot more pepper next time.  The best sausage gravy I ever had was full of yummy black pepper.  I just don't think I used enough.

The end result was yummy, even my son Jason ate one and said it wasn't that bad.  Coming from the King of Mac and Cheese this was high praise.  Dad had seconds, there was not a lot leftover.  Another win in my cooking world!

My grandbaby Eleanor and my youngest daughter "Auntie" Michelle.

These faces make me so happy, they are part of the reason for our cooking adventures!

What Would Chrissy Say?

Oh my lord do I love these cook books and everything I have made so far!  I have often said that I hate cooking, which generally I do.  I am not that mom who finds satisfaction in preparing a pretty meal and putting it on the table for her family.  Let’s be completely honest, I do my best to avoid cooking at all costs.  Meal planning, hate it, and frankly most of the food goes to waste before I can be bothered to cook it.

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. 

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?).

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.

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!

Creamy Potato Salad with Bacon

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