Cooking

Cooking is a whole new adventure for me now. When I was younger, especially when Dad was working full-time second shift, going to school full-time first shift and Mom was working full-time third shift, I got to do a lot of cooking for the family. Granted it was simple stuff. Mac and cheese, hamburger casserole, stone soup, peeling and making the mashed potatoes and vegetables while Mom made the chicken fried steak. Only she made it soft, not fried crisp, kind of like built in gravy. I made spaghetti and meat crumbles (browned and broken into chunks, not fancy-schmancy balls). I was a much pickier eater then. I have branched out since. I will eat cooked carrots, green beans, rice, brussel sprouts, broccoli, raw cauliflower, even (some) beans in my chili. Still ain’t touching peas, lima beans, asparagus, liver (or any other organ meat for that matter), or beets. I’m still kind of iffy on the whole zucchini, squash, sweet potato front, though.

I just started with an online meal planning service. Every week, they send a budget friendly plan for 7 meals portioned for 1-2 servings. Some of them are off, with one thing in the description, another in the ingredients list and a third in the instructions. This past Sunday, I tried to follow the recipe for pumpkin pancakes. 2 cups pancake mix to 3 and a half cups water. I thought that seemed like a lot, but I thought maybe they were compensating for the pumpkin. Nope. When I ended up wth soup, I doubled checked the box and that was more than twice the amount of water needed. So I added 2 more cups of the pancake mix. They said I could freeze the leftover pancakes. Maybe I could skip a step and freeze the batter?
Tried to cook the on an electric fry pan I have. It’s an old heavy-duty iron one. Suckers stuck ugly on an ape. Okay, maybe not enough oil. I’ll try the skillet I cooked the bacon in. Any more oil in the bottom of that one and I’d be deep frying the things. Might as well call them funnel cakes at that point and sell them at the State Fair.
After much struggle and frustration, I came up with 5 pancakes and a bowl full of batter. The pancakes were good with maple syrup. S said she’d be glad to take the batter home to feed her boys.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the next week’s recipes are going to be. Some of the better recipes last week were smothered pork chops in the slow cooker, Italian sausage-and-potato soup, loaded baked potato and BBQ chicken casserole, and pesto chicken with zucchini and summer squash over pasta. Lots of spice and flavor, which is good, because with my poor sense of smell, I need the strong flavors. I can smell three kinds of flowers: roses, lilacs, and “flowers”. Lilacs are my favorite. Well, that’s it for today. I may revisit this one later in the month, but I’m getting kitty-swarmed because he thinks it’s bedtime and must finish.