Julie and Julia

As if I don't have enough time consuming hobbies in my life, I have felt the need to complete my 50's housewife persona by encouraging my budding love of cooking. This has been difficult to do since my creativity in the kitchen has fallen to an all time low. We were living off crackers and store-bought cookies.

Rather than subject myself to the chore of finding FoodNetwork shows on the internet, I decided to take a page from the movie Julie & Julia and cook through a cookbook. But instead of Julia Child's cookbook, I went for something more pedestrian- the 2009 Taste of Home cookbook my mom got me for Christmas 2 years ago. Everything I've tried from there up to this point has been good to the point of gorging, plus the ingredients are not exotic.

So I did some research, dividing things into categories, looking for ingredients, reading recipes. And I figured that I'd have to cook 8 recipes a week, approx. to get through the entire book in one year. That seems ridiculous until you realize that 3 recipes for one meal isn't unreasonable, so 2 meals a week, breakfast on Saturday, and a treat for game night and that's 8. Which leaves plenty of time during the week for consuming leftovers. Result=culinary bliss.

Which has been true thus far. Let's start at the beginning, my birthday and a Sunday. I made this delicious quiche and this magnificent cake.
Why yes, that is homemade ganache.

We had to cut the slices really thin so people didn't explode.

The rest of the week was tricky since we were flying to New York on Thursday morning. But I still found time to make the most delicious lemon sauce with the best fried chicken, lemon potatoes and a corny salad.
The dipping sauce definitely stole the show that night.

Then the next night we made taco salad. Really, really, really yummy taco salad that seems overly spicy to me, until I remembered that I did have two large, annoying cankor sores that emphasized the spiciness.
Not the best picture, but G loved it, as did Grandma, A.D., and both visiting little girls. I hear the leftovers were also good.

More to come!