I had Frosted Flakes and chocolate pudding for breakfast today, so I'm off to a good start! Right? I also had this amazing conversation with my best friend Brooke which illustrates clearly why she's my best friend:
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Friday, July 25, 2014
Italian Mac 'n Cheese
Oh, I'm sure this has a real name. Thing is, neither my mom nor myself knows it. We have always called this Italian Mac 'n Cheese or else "sausage spaghetti," I guess because she once dated an Italian guy and this was a side at all their meals and she forgot what they called it. My two-year-old calls it mac 'n cheese, too, because anything with red sauce is spaghetti and anything else is mac 'n cheese, though sometimes this one confuses her and it still gets called "gai-yee."
Call it what you will. This stuff is awesome and exactly how I wanted to kick off my cooking adventure. It's not anything new to me so I knew what I was doing to an extent. It's somewhat time-consuming, but not complicated. It would be a good start. Ignore that I'm basically shit at food photography, please. And that I didn't have my fonts downloaded because this computer is relatively new and also I'm lazy. You're not here for the pictures, right? You're here because of my winning personality.
Right?
Guys?
Screw it. Here's the recipe.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Yet
I decided yesterday I would learn to cook. I would learn to cook because I have a wonderful boyfriend whose only* real claim to fame is that he can grill and make omelets and I want to live off more than ribs and omelets even though I love both of those things.
By the way, is it omelets or omelettes? Because Blogger is not red-lining either. I could look it up, but, you know, effort.
Anyway, I've never been one for cooking, but oh Lord do I love to bake. I'm not some fancy-pants cake decorator or anything like that, but cookies, guys. (Do not mistake the "fancy-pants" for disdain. I'll admit to jealousy and having several pins on my Pinterest of pretty cakes and the like.) I can bake some good cookies. Back in April, my Pinterest feed was all a-buzz over making chocolate chip cookies with hard-boiled eggs. After trying them, I've become so accustomed to the idea that that sounds less like "ewwww" and more like "oh yeah, that was amazing..." with a doofy smile. I know how it sounds, though, because that face you're likely making is exactly the same face I made and the same exact face my mother still makes even though she tasted them. However, they were amazing, and they apparently never go stale and start getting harder because I had some for at least a week and they were the exact same. They stay soft and chewy and fabulous.
Cooking doesn't excite me nearly as much, and you might think it would seeing as how they're supposedly, you know, the same thing. You can't even attribute it to the fact that sweets are good and food is boring. I don't make boring food, I make food I will like, plain and simple. Whether that's the chicken recipe my mom found online and decided we should try (incredible) or a Tombstone frozen pizza, I am happy about food. But after years of grumping when my mom dumped "finishing up dinner" on me while she went out in the backyard or something (in retrospect, it wasn't that bad, but I hated it as a teenager), I've grown to truly detest the idea.
I had once come to terms with the fact that I would never like cooking. I would find a chef for a husband (who also happened to be rich -- trust fund, maybe? -- but still down-to-earth and as dorky as me) who would let me hire a maid and cook gourmet meals that my picky self actually enjoyed. That didn't work out, though. My first hubby-potential enjoyed cooking and was actually quite creative and inventive. Sadly, there were a few less-than-fun reasons we didn't work out. Oh well. Water. Bridge. Under it. My second hubby-potential didn't know what a fried egg sandwich was or how it worked, made boxed mac-n-cheese wrong, and had to be taught to make Ramen. He had never made Ramen, guys. And he also couldn't eat anything without hot sauce. Including my mother's awesome spaghetti. That's not why we didn't work out, but it didn't help.
I've decided that even though my boyfriend claims to be a good cook (he hasn't proved it yet), I'm going to make myself learn how. I'm going to teach myself to cook and hopefully teach myself to enjoy it in the process. How will I enjoy it? By blogging about it. Aren't you lucky? In between the scattered recipes and cooking attempts, you will get to hear about my life, my little girl, and all the crazy shenanigans that ensue around us.
So, hello. I'm Jaclyn, I'm twenty-four, and I don't cook.
Yet.
* I have to add that my boyfriend has plenty of other claim to fames because he read this and asserted that he does. But many of them really shouldn't be discussed until at least blog post number three. You know, so we can get to know each other first. Wink, wink.
By the way, is it omelets or omelettes? Because Blogger is not red-lining either. I could look it up, but, you know, effort.
Anyway, I've never been one for cooking, but oh Lord do I love to bake. I'm not some fancy-pants cake decorator or anything like that, but cookies, guys. (Do not mistake the "fancy-pants" for disdain. I'll admit to jealousy and having several pins on my Pinterest of pretty cakes and the like.) I can bake some good cookies. Back in April, my Pinterest feed was all a-buzz over making chocolate chip cookies with hard-boiled eggs. After trying them, I've become so accustomed to the idea that that sounds less like "ewwww" and more like "oh yeah, that was amazing..." with a doofy smile. I know how it sounds, though, because that face you're likely making is exactly the same face I made and the same exact face my mother still makes even though she tasted them. However, they were amazing, and they apparently never go stale and start getting harder because I had some for at least a week and they were the exact same. They stay soft and chewy and fabulous.
Cooking doesn't excite me nearly as much, and you might think it would seeing as how they're supposedly, you know, the same thing. You can't even attribute it to the fact that sweets are good and food is boring. I don't make boring food, I make food I will like, plain and simple. Whether that's the chicken recipe my mom found online and decided we should try (incredible) or a Tombstone frozen pizza, I am happy about food. But after years of grumping when my mom dumped "finishing up dinner" on me while she went out in the backyard or something (in retrospect, it wasn't that bad, but I hated it as a teenager), I've grown to truly detest the idea.
I had once come to terms with the fact that I would never like cooking. I would find a chef for a husband (who also happened to be rich -- trust fund, maybe? -- but still down-to-earth and as dorky as me) who would let me hire a maid and cook gourmet meals that my picky self actually enjoyed. That didn't work out, though. My first hubby-potential enjoyed cooking and was actually quite creative and inventive. Sadly, there were a few less-than-fun reasons we didn't work out. Oh well. Water. Bridge. Under it. My second hubby-potential didn't know what a fried egg sandwich was or how it worked, made boxed mac-n-cheese wrong, and had to be taught to make Ramen. He had never made Ramen, guys. And he also couldn't eat anything without hot sauce. Including my mother's awesome spaghetti. That's not why we didn't work out, but it didn't help.
I've decided that even though my boyfriend claims to be a good cook (he hasn't proved it yet), I'm going to make myself learn how. I'm going to teach myself to cook and hopefully teach myself to enjoy it in the process. How will I enjoy it? By blogging about it. Aren't you lucky? In between the scattered recipes and cooking attempts, you will get to hear about my life, my little girl, and all the crazy shenanigans that ensue around us.
So, hello. I'm Jaclyn, I'm twenty-four, and I don't cook.
Yet.
* I have to add that my boyfriend has plenty of other claim to fames because he read this and asserted that he does. But many of them really shouldn't be discussed until at least blog post number three. You know, so we can get to know each other first. Wink, wink.
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