We’re Cooking with WHAT????

In cooking class yesterday we cooked wth WEEDS.  Not that the illegal weed but cudzu, dandelions and lavender.  We even made a dish using rose petals.  Talk about channeling my inner Euell Gibbons.

Throughout this cooking class experience I’ve worn my big girl panties and tried everything we’ve made, yes even a few weeks ago when we used whole squid in our dish.  Talk about the yuck factor running amuck through the entire class that day.

Well, when we were told we were cooking with the stuff you find growing on the side of the roads I had my doubts but it really wasn’t that bad and yes the entire menu had at least one odd ingredient.

Our Mouthwatering, Romantic Anniversary Dinner

Tuesday marked 8 years I’ve been married to my best friend. Don wanted to do something special for me so he made my favorite dinner, homemade macaroni and cheese. He also had 5 cheese garlic bread and sparkling red grape juice. Wanting to make it more festive I pulled down the wine glasses that we’ve never used and decided to make his second favorite pie,lemon meringue.

Not feeling comfortable making pie crust from scratch and not wanting to roll it out I decided on the ready made crusts. Something in my gut said to get frozen crust in the pie tin but no, I needed to put a little work in it and went for the one you roll out and put in the pie pan yourself. I didn’t do too bad. I mean it looked like a pie crust BEFORE it went into the oven. I even used the fork and pricked the bottom and sides as the instructions said. What came out of the oven was misshapen, pulled, pulled down in various places and had some thick bulges in others. Knowing I was going to cover it with meringue I felt confident I could cover up any crust imperfections. I mean nobody was going to be looking at the crust anyway, they’d be admiring my beautiful meringue.

Next step, lemon filling. I’ve never made a lemon meringue pie before but knew my mom use to make them all the time so it couldn’t be that hard. Or could it? I first looked through numerous cookbooks and found several variations on the filling but most said you could also use lemon pudding. I went for that option because how can you mess up Jello Pudding? I was soon to find out.

My First Attempt at Homemade – Made From Scratch Pancakes

I’m on a pancake kick right now. Pancakes every morning with sugar free syrup. The best sugar free syrup I’ve found is Mrs. Butterworth Extra Thick. I also like the Mrs. Butterworth Complete Pancake Mix. You know the one, just add water. When I make the pancakes I usually make enough for a couple of mornings so I don’t have to go through the hassle of mixing the batter each day. Yeah, adding water and stirring can be hard work.

Well, I ran out of pancake mix a couple of weeks ago and didn’t buy anymore so I resorted to Bisquick. That’s still rather simple, add milk, egg and mix. Well, this morning I decided to be a bit more adventurous and flex those Domestic Goddess muscles and make my pancakes from scratch. Yes, you read that right.

My first step was finding the right recipe. It had to be perfect and fool proof  for my first attempt at real homemade pancakes and I must say this one intrigued me because it had VINEGAR in it. Once I read the recipe fully I realized I was making my own buttermilk for the pancakes.