Cooking Day Pictures!

[mousme]

As promised, an entry with pictures of the cooking day. Most of them are behind the cut.



We got off to a late(r) start in the morning that on previous cooking days. I only woke up at 7:00, which meant that by the time I was ready and pdaughter were out the door on the way to daycare, it was 8:00. I set about making the first recipe, which was cinnamon toast muffins. They are pictured here, on the right, warm out of the oven. Unfortunately, I was missing an ingredient, which meant I had to wait until pdaughter got home (she was picking up another ingredient we were missing, which as you will see was our theme for the day), but after that it went quite smoothly.

These are the big hit of the day: beefy chilli pockets. In related news, Doctor Who and Donna Noble have forever ruined the word "pockets" for me. I can't see the word without thinking "POCKETS!" I can't say that I mind terribly.

Pictured here are more pockets. Creamy chicken pockets, in this case. Pronounced "yummy" by Bean.




And as follows, in no particular order: creamy cranberry quesadillas, buffalo chicken soup with orzo, chicken à la king, Greek potato packets, spicy sausage pasta, and breakfast pizza.




Not pictured are the crockpot chilli, the slow cooker parmesan honey pork roast, as well as the crockpot pineapple teriyaki pork and the frozen fruit smoothie breakfast bars. I tried to get pictures of everything, but it was a hectic day.

I ended up having to go out in the morning for cheese (due to a miscommunication the night before, which meant that the cheese we have in the house was still in the freezer), and as it turned out we needed twice as much Monterey Jack as the prep list called for, which was very irritating (we ended up using what was left of the cheddar instead).

Then in the afternoon I got the call that my car was fixed (yay!), so I went out to fetch her and stopped by the store for a few more last-minute supplies and some extra aluminum containers (no, not aluminium, spellcheck, my variant is perfectly acceptable English!) for storage purposes.

In short, there were quite a few interruptions throughout the day, and when pdaughter left to fetch Bean from daycare, it felt like everyone in the universe decided to phone me right then and there. I think I fielded about six phone calls in an hour and a half. So I was still elbow-deep in the buffalo chicken soup with orzo by the time they got home, instead of working on the breakfast bars the way I'd hoped.

The rest of the evening was spent working on the breakfast bars, preventing Bean from pulling a carton of 20 eggs onto the floor ("Dah-dee, what dis?" *YANK*), and watching as he built a very elaborate train track along the floor. He's getting really good at building train tracks, and it's always fun to see what he invents as well as to listen to the stories he comes up with while he's building. He wanted nothing to do with the beefy chilli pockets, disliked the quesadillas, but really liked the chicken pockets and had a whole bunch of fruit. Right at bedtime (later than usual) he declared he was still hungry and fussed and cried until pdaughter let him sit at the table and have a beef pocket.

Once Bean was settled and in bed I finished up the breakfast bars and parcelled out the remaining soup and chicken à la king while pdaughter worked her magic on the downstairs freezer. See, when I looked at the freezer, it seemed full. When she was done with it, everything fit inside. MAGIC.


The trick to a truly successful cooking day is to make sure that you clean as you go. By the time 9:00pm rolled around, we were wiped and there were still two dishes left to cook. So we decided that sanity and rest were more important than getting all the cooking done. Half an hour of cleaning/tidying later, and the kitchen looked liked nothing had ever transpired.

Today's cooking effort included finishing up the breakfast smoothie bars (not pictured), putting away the pineapple teriyaki pork (also not pictured), and making enchilada pasta:

Alas, I ran out of time and couldn't make the chicken tenders that were last on the list, but pdaughter said she'd be able to do that this afternoon or maybe this evening, so I'm guessing that by now they're tucked away in the freezer.

Comments

[mousme.livejournal.com]

WHOA. That is trippy. Pun intended.

I like the ones with timers. Mine doesn't have one, but pdaughter's does.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

heh - I usually have mine on while I'm at work, and most things I crock pot are unlikely to be harmed by being in there toooo long, so I dod't usually worry about a timer.

The people I dogsit for have one that doesn't have a real 'low' setting though, and I don't like it very much.

However, they have somewhere discovered crock pot *liners* which are pretty fabulous to use for a lot of things. so much easier to clean up... though wasteful of plastic, I suppose.