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A (possibly brief) return to cooking
Nov. 3rd, 2015 10:02 pmWell, it figures that as soon as I post that I'm doing okay enough to eat real food again, I start feeling worse again. FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU
Anyway, I did manage to start cooking again long enough to put a post together. Except I totally had an ingredients fail with TWO out of the three recipes I had planned. First, I had the idea to make shrimp scampi to use up some shrimp I've had in the freezer for FOREVER. Except, of course, I didn't bother to check the shrimp before I went shopping and as I'm about to start cooking, I open the bag and discover it is freezer-burned all to HELL and too gross to look at, let alone eat. So, cancel the shrimp scampi.
Then, I realized that I went grocery shopping totally planning to make a butternut squash casserole and somehow bought all the ingredients EXCEPT THE SQUASH. I wasn't about to go back to the store, so this is what I made instead:
Peanut Butter Snickers Pie - Or "how to use up your leftover Halloween candy," lol. I was actually looking for a recipe that would replicate this amazing peanut butter pie served at a restaurant near me, and alas, this is not it, but it's still pretty good. It got thumbs up all around from my coworkers when I brought it into work. I definitely took the "stronger peanut butter flavor" option and added the extra 1/2 cup of peanut butter. I also used chunky peanut butter, which probably wasn't necessary, since the candy made it chunky enough, and Snickers already has peanuts in it.
Pasta with Prosciutto and Melon - Watching The Sopranos has me all craving cured meats, so I bought prosciutto on a whim and then needed to come up with ways to use it. I was kind of skeptical about a pasta sauce made out of cantaloupe, but it actually tasted really good! The cantaloupe cooks down into a kind of goo, so it's not like you're eating fruit salad with pasta in it or anything, and really the strongest flavor is the lemon, so the cantaloupe is more of just a vague sweetness.
French Pork with Apple Cream Sauce - I was originally looking for a base recipe I could fiddle with, because I wanted to use the goat cheese I bought for the squash casserole. (I was going to maybe combine it with this one or this one.) But then I decided not to use the goat cheese (it'll keep longer if I don't open the package), so I mostly followed the recipe as is. Except I didn't have any cider, hard or otherwise, so I used vegetable stock instead. Also, by that point, I'd looked at about a dozen recipes involving some combination of pork, apples, goat cheese, and heavy cream, and I think every single one of them used different herbs, so... I decided to add all of them? I didn't have any fresh thyme anyway, so I just browned the pork without it, and then added 1 teaspoon of dried thyme to the sauce, along with 1 teaspoon each of sage and rosemary and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar. Came out pretty delicious, so I stand by my "all of the above" strategy.
Anyway, I did manage to start cooking again long enough to put a post together. Except I totally had an ingredients fail with TWO out of the three recipes I had planned. First, I had the idea to make shrimp scampi to use up some shrimp I've had in the freezer for FOREVER. Except, of course, I didn't bother to check the shrimp before I went shopping and as I'm about to start cooking, I open the bag and discover it is freezer-burned all to HELL and too gross to look at, let alone eat. So, cancel the shrimp scampi.
Then, I realized that I went grocery shopping totally planning to make a butternut squash casserole and somehow bought all the ingredients EXCEPT THE SQUASH. I wasn't about to go back to the store, so this is what I made instead:
Peanut Butter Snickers Pie - Or "how to use up your leftover Halloween candy," lol. I was actually looking for a recipe that would replicate this amazing peanut butter pie served at a restaurant near me, and alas, this is not it, but it's still pretty good. It got thumbs up all around from my coworkers when I brought it into work. I definitely took the "stronger peanut butter flavor" option and added the extra 1/2 cup of peanut butter. I also used chunky peanut butter, which probably wasn't necessary, since the candy made it chunky enough, and Snickers already has peanuts in it.
Pasta with Prosciutto and Melon - Watching The Sopranos has me all craving cured meats, so I bought prosciutto on a whim and then needed to come up with ways to use it. I was kind of skeptical about a pasta sauce made out of cantaloupe, but it actually tasted really good! The cantaloupe cooks down into a kind of goo, so it's not like you're eating fruit salad with pasta in it or anything, and really the strongest flavor is the lemon, so the cantaloupe is more of just a vague sweetness.
French Pork with Apple Cream Sauce - I was originally looking for a base recipe I could fiddle with, because I wanted to use the goat cheese I bought for the squash casserole. (I was going to maybe combine it with this one or this one.) But then I decided not to use the goat cheese (it'll keep longer if I don't open the package), so I mostly followed the recipe as is. Except I didn't have any cider, hard or otherwise, so I used vegetable stock instead. Also, by that point, I'd looked at about a dozen recipes involving some combination of pork, apples, goat cheese, and heavy cream, and I think every single one of them used different herbs, so... I decided to add all of them? I didn't have any fresh thyme anyway, so I just browned the pork without it, and then added 1 teaspoon of dried thyme to the sauce, along with 1 teaspoon each of sage and rosemary and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar. Came out pretty delicious, so I stand by my "all of the above" strategy.
