April Fool's Food Fest!

I was home sick 3 days this week, and thank goodness I still had a few dinners in my freezer from the cooking/freezing fest M and I had New Year's Weekend! I ate them all though, so it was time for another cooking fest. Fortunately, M told me about this awesome blog called Skinnytaste (Gina's Skinny Recipes). I found four recipes I wanted to try that provide a nice variety, and I'm excited to get going. Actually, I just started the first one, Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili, because it cooks on low in the slow cooker for 10 hours (while I SLEEP!). I also needed to plan my lunches for the week, and since I'm tired of turkey wraps and don't want to have to use the microwave, I decided to make my tried and true raw soup. I found a great recipe for squash soup on the same site, so I decided to make both and take the squash soup with a little side of salad + raw soup "dressing" for my lunches this week. Soooo....that means I've got 6 (that's SIX) things to make!!!

There are several steps in this massive process:

1. clean the kitchen - it's very important to start with a clean slate (note: this also serves as a productive procrastination tool)
2. make a thorough grocery list - it's good to note the exact amounts of the ingredients you'll need, because often a recipe calls for an amount that is different than the amount that comes in a can or package
3. get fresh, local, organic ingredients
4. have supportive, reliable company - because this is gonna take awhile...
5. don't start cooking at 10:00 pm (oops...I forgot to create this list BEFORE I started...)
6. if you feel a little overwhelmed at the thought of cooking 6 pretty involved things, start with the slow cooker recipe! :)

The grocery list for this project was SERIOUS...and double-sided! I was not playing around here, people!!!

My "take no prisoners" grocery list! (step 2)

I had an absolute BLAST arranging all of my ingredients and then doing a photo shoot of them. It all felt so professional!

Start with fresh, local, organic ingredients (step 3)

I was fortunate to have some really supportive help, too:

Supportive company (step 4)

And now...THE FOOD!!!!

Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili: This was by far the easiest thing to make, and it is honestly my favorite thing as far as taste and overall enjoyment go. It is good to eat with some Kashi fire roasted veggie crackers. :) I was AMAZED at how much chicken it seems there is once you shred it. And - I learned something very important when cooking this: the reason the chicken in my crock pot recipes sometimes dries out and overcooks so easily is because I cut it into such small pieces (DUH!)! I loved that this recipe has you lay the whole breasts on top during almost the entire cooking process, because that keeps the chicken from drying out. I'm totally using that trick for all my other crock pot recipes that use chicken!

Cooking the chicken breasts on top, whole - GENIUS!

The finished product - SOOO GOOD!

Beef, potato, and quinoa soup: This was one of the more complex recipes, but it still wasn't difficult. The flavor of this soup is PHENOMENAL! The fresh cilantro really adds complexity to the taste. Even after thawing and heating it, this soup still tastes fresh. I've never cooked with quinoa before, and that was really exciting. I did a little research before starting this recipe, and it's a good thing I did, because I found out that uncooked quinoa cooks to 4x its size! That means, 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa bulks up to 2 cups of cooked quinoa - so make sure you're clear about whether the amount of quinoa in your recipe is cooked or uncooked - it will make a BIG difference!!

This is a horrendous picture. The bluish haze is steam.

Tuna noodle casserole: A Midwestern favorite, casseroles of all kinds were a huge part of my childhood. Although tuna noodle wasn't a casserole my mom made often, she made plenty of others like chicken & broccoli and beef & vegetable. This recipe was ok, but it was rather bland. I had some whole wheat penne, so I decided to use that rather than buying noodles. Well, I think the noodles probably make a difference, because this casserole was just a little weird with penne - the taste was fine, but penne needs to be covered in red sauce, not tuna. :) I also didn't want to buy milk just for this recipe, so I used some 1/2 and 1/2 that I already had. I also used more peas than the recipe calls for - because I had a 16 oz. bag and just wanted to use them all. So - my modifications to the recipe may have led to its blandness...but it was still good, and it froze well, too.

Noodles, penne...whatever!

Another mini ingredients shoot...

This doesn't do it justice - it was pretty!

Spinach lasagna rolls: If these were people, they'd be super popular! Not only are they absolutely gorgeous, but they were a TON of fun to make! (NOTE: If you enjoy using your hands to cook, then you will consider this fun, but if you do not like doing things such as kneading bread or hand-rolling cookies, then this would probably not be fun for you.) These also froze well, and my only suggestion is to have some extra tomato sauce on hand when you thaw and heat them, as the amount of sauce used in the recipe ends up being rather sparse. (NOTE: My definition of "sparse" may be a little skewed, because I could drink tomato sauce by the glass, so keep that in mind!) Also, my cheese/spinach mixture seems rather bland, so next time I will add more salt/garlic salt. These are very tasty, and two rolls with a nice salad makes a tasty and healthy dinner.

It was so much fun to mix the cheese filling!

Pardon me while I execute an "artistic" shot...

The filling spread really well onto the lasagna noodles.

A lasagna roll ready to be bathed in sauce.

The final product - which was AMAZING!

Raw soup: Due to circumstances beyond my control (i.e., my blender being a total piece of $#!^@*%), I was unable to actually make the raw soup. This was a complete and utter shame, because then most of those ingredients went to waste (which makes me ill to even think about).

Squash soup: Since this soup also depended upon use of the blender, it also went unmade, and I'm ashamed to say that the beautiful squash I bought also went to waste. And, to quote the cashier at Clements', "that's the biggest butternut squash I've ever seen!" On a positive note, I put the blade through the dishwasher a couple of weeks after my cook fest, and the blender started working again. The blade had been getting stuck and not turning, so it must've gotten cleaned and loosened in the dishwasher. I'm still getting a Blendtec though... :)

The prize-winning butternut squash that never got to be soup... :'(

For dinner the night of the cook fest: lasagna roll, chicken chili, and tuna noodle casserole - YUM!

GF Peanut Butter Chip Brownies

I almost forgot the most important part of the "thank you" dinner that Kim & Jen fixed for me a couple of weekends ago...DESSERT! :) I remember that I was so excited about dessert (and I may have been in the middle of a game of Rock Band 3...) that I didn't stop to take pictures before I gorged myself. And, by the time I got around to taking pictures, there was only one little, lonely brownie left. Try to imagine this brownie fresh from the oven, all gooey and warm, with melty peanut butter chips that stick to the inside of your mouth a little, oh - and with some vanilla bean ice cream and fresh sliced strawberries...and that's what our dessert was like! The best part was that they were gluten-free! :)

This doesn't really do it justice...they were amazing!