Jan 7 - Shepherds Pie and Irish Soda Bread

Day 7

Cook:  Me

Meal:  Shepherds Pie and Irish Soda Bread

First came the Soda Bread:

Super simple to make and extremely pleased with how quickly it got gobbled up!  I will surely be making this again.

Now onto the Pie!

Cutting potatoes!

Cutting carrots!

Cutting celery!

Green onions!

Brown that meat.. you should probably use a deeper pan.. lol

Add the green onions and garlic that I never mentioned!

All all the colorful veggies that you chopped up!

Cup of peas!  Chicken Broth!  Cream of mushroom!

Stir, thicken, bask in your cooking glory!

Still thickening!  Thicker = awesomer!

Mashed potatoes!

 Spread the mash on the bottom of pie plates.

 Fill with the awesome glory you made on the stovetop earlier.

Cover with more mash.

 Make enough mash to cover the pies better than this!

 

Stick under the broiler, til the mash gets brown and a little crispy.

Scoop and eat!  NOMNOMNOM

Jan 2 Dinner

Day 2 of challenge

Cook: Wife

Dinner:  Turkey burgers with fries and salad

She makes the patties herself, and damn they're good.  Juicy as hell.  Shes making bacon to go on them, swiss cheese, seasoned the patties, fries.  Nice and simple, and delicious.

Introduction of the challenge!

First off, I'll start by saying that it has surely been awhile since I've posted anything here.  But now I've got something new that my family is trying.

No eating out for one month.

My wife found some site where a family did this, so we thought we'd try it ourselves!  It is going to be hard, we know this.  But we think we can do it, and dammit, we need to do it lol.

So as to our rules:

No eating out for one month.

My wife and I alternate cooking.  I cook on odd days, she cooks on even days.

We started this with the new year (Jan 1, 2012)

This goes for all meals.

So, I have to make a post talking about my first cooking day:  Jan 1st!  (I know this is Jan 2, so I'm posting a few things today, lol)

Bacon cinnamon rolls

So I found this on another blog that my wife forwarded me recently.   Real easy to do.   Buy canned cinnamon rolls, unroll them, place cooked bacon in them and roll them back up.  

We did a batch without bacon as well. They're cooking as we speak.  Might update later if I can pull myself away from them lol.

Marcel's Quantum Kitchen

Marcel's Quantum Kitchen premiered last night on SyFy.. (Sci-Fi channel).  It looked like it could be an interesting watch, as I'd seen this kid on Top Chef.  He seemed like a douche on Top Chef, but thought I'd give him another chance.

Goddammit I was wrong.  While the show was mildly interesting, the cooking concepts were quite interesting, this kid is a giant fucking douchebag!  He's an idiot that thrives on attention, and he's getting it.

There were times when he seemed realistic.  Even a somewhat decent guy, but 90% of the time, he was bitching about everyone, and how hard his job was because of the actions of others.

The editing of the show was quite out of hand as well.  At one point, Marcel was asking a non-chef (whom he hired for the catering business front end aspect) to prepare some apple stuff.  She was slow as shit, and she stated that she was worried for her job due to her slowness...  suddenly we get the back and forth, overly dramatic edits between her face showing concern, to his face showing contempt, back to her face, then to his, and so forth..  Way overdone.

I will probably give the show another chance, see if the cheese in this show gets melted down to something manageable.