Domestication by Pinterest

This summer has been interesting, and it has not been without its side effects. One of those side effects has been an increase in my domestic skills. They seem to be growing exponentially all of the sudden. And the biggest place this has been manifest is in cooking.

Now, this isn't to say I didn't cook before. I have always had the ability to cook, and in college I was even known to make some delightful things. But they were always kind of spur of the moment throwing things together out of the same 8 ingredients you survive off your entire college career. I mean come on, what can you really cook when you mostly just buy bread, chicken, rice, cream of chicken soup, carrots, potatoes, oranges, and lemon pepper. So I learned to get creative. With those 8 ingredients.

I also had a slight problem with burning things. But I have two legitimate reasons for that. 1)our oven was possessed, and possibly older than me. And 2)I truly do like things well done (some call it burnt, I call it delicious okay?) But I only set 2 things on fire, and that's not bad right?

Half-babysitting these kids is kind of like a job. Just...
without monetary payment. 

So, my cooking really took off with my increased Pinterest time in my jobless kind of babysitting my nieces and nephews summer. All of the sudden when I was pinning recipes I was like hey, I should actually make this! I felt empowered. I got to work.

Okay so actually the first recipe I made that got me into this craze was a quinoa and potato summer salad based off of this recipe of a tuna casserole. I was trying to find good recipes that me and my parents could all eat because my dad is on a vegan thing these days. He's not strict, but he's feeling good about it, so I've gotta support it. I had eaten it at a friend's and made it as she had, sans tuna, quinoa instead of cous-cous, and served cold instead of warm. Seriously delish. Though fyi, if you are using fresh green beans, cut them in half because those suckers are long. I don't always have common sense. After making this dinner I pinned it on Pinterest myself, and decided to give all my other pinned recipes a try.

The first Pinterest thing I made were some Italian fries, Martha Stewart style. Since this was my first Pinterest venture, I halved the recipe, intending to only make it for myself. But my mom and sister tried them as well, and my dad apparently thought they were lunch for all but didn't get back into the kitchen until they were all eaten. Sorry pops. I may have eaten half the pan. So basically they were delicious, though I would use less (and/or no) butter next time. Olive oil and butter Martha? Really necessary? Let's be real.

The next day was pretty awesome. I was determined to make those homemade goldfish that looked to good to be true. I mean really, 5 ingredients? This couldn't be real. Well guess what, it is real. Now, next time I do think I would add just a titch  more cheese (I measure it pretty loosely instead of packing it down at all). And I didn't make them in goldfish shapes because we don't have any soda cans in my house (that stuff is painful to drink). So I used to random tiny cookie cutters my mom had. One heart-shaped, one animal-shaped. My sister thinks it was a border collie, though it looked a little poodle-ish to me. The only disappointing thing about this recipe, they didn't actually come out orange. In fact, the kids thought they were cookies at first. Another trick about this recipe is that before you've handled the dough very long it seems pretty crumbly, but once it warms up a bit the butter softens everything up, so don't you worry.

Before the homemade goldfish I had done a non-Pinterest and incredibly simple recipe of Kool-Aid/Jell-o popsicles. I mostly wanted to give the kids something to do and look forward to so I could keep them positive about the television being off. We didn't have popsicle molds but you know what? Mini muffin tins did the trick.

What the single serving cookie supposedly looks like. 

After the goldfish and the popsicles you would think I was done for the day. But no! That day was particularly fantastic and after coming off the high of a fun ward party (I found people who like Dr. Who!) I decided to make another winner. The single serving cookie. This recipe...it is so good. Go make it. Go make it right now. A couple of pointers though. I added just a tiny bit of water to soften it up, it's also way better without the chocolate chips. Trust me. Oh and it doesn't look like the picture at all. Not half as pretty. But who cares!?

What the single serving cookie actually
looks like.

And still not finished. Another project I had wanted to do with the kids was make ice cream. Anyone else make ice cream in physics in 9th grade? In a little jar and/or ziplock bag and you rolled it around until it became ice cream? No one? Must have been an "almost summer" lesson. But sadly, we didn't have half & half in the house or heavy cream or anything of that nature. So I figured it would never work. WRONG. I found an ice cream recipe made out of nothing but bananas, peanut butter, and cocoa. What now. Now, I didn't quite freeze the banana slices solid so it didn't quite turn out as it was supposed to, but the kids still liked it. And hey, no added sugar? I'm into that. This was also the second day in a row that I used the food processor, a piece of equipment I had never before used. So 200% increase.

Things got even better when I made these baked potato rounds for dinner. Now, my version was without bacon (sadly) but I added lunchmeat ham to some of them, mostly for the kids (though I loved those too, shhh). I also substituted green onions for red onions but I think that was actually the best choice ever. Just a conjecture. The key to these really was the cheese, it made them the delight they are. I did make a vegan option for my pops without cheese but he didn't realize what he was missing. I will also say that the second time I made them (yes, I made them twice in two days, that good) I used red potatoes and they were WAY better. Mostly because they cooked in half the time and were so beautifully soft. I could marry red potatoes. Okay just one more thing. Even my nephew liked these, and apparently he doesn't like potatoes.



And then we come to tonight. In order to once again make a meal that would fit everyone's tastes without making modification, I made these avocado enchiladas. (And don't worry, I used beef broth instead of beer, because you can do that apparently.) I can't even stand how good these were. I had to do without red onions and cilantro, substituted crushed tomatoes for fresh ones, and I almost forgot the lime! But I made it through. Also, while the recipe doesn't tell you to cook these covered in foil it does tell you when to take the foil off...oops. But I just covered mine with a baking sheet when I caught that detail and they didn't end up being too dry.

Seriously delicious. I made the cheese an optional side.
Once again, vegan father. 

These were more labor intensive than the other recipes (a lot of cutting/dicing/mincing/what?) so I found myself thinking, if these aren't good I'll be super annoyed. When my dad took a bite of his first enchilada I was seriously stressed. Then he ate four more. Enchiladas not bites. (Though I'm sure he took at least four more bites.) So I did it! I also made some fairly easy Spanish/Mexican rice to accompany it. Once again, modifications, but just because I was too lazy to find the tomato sauce so it was mostly just like homemade rice-a-roni. It was a bit dry but I probably overcooked it a tinch.

So there you go. I knew you'd want to read my cooking journal. I just knew it. My next dinner I believe will be restaurant style ham-fried rice (sans ham, I love to modify!) and this baked sweet and sour chicken. We'll see.