Pesto Chicken and Veggies

I always struggle to prepare vegetables. I don’t know what to do with them besides put them on a tray with dip. During my daily stroll through the popular recipes on Tasty, I stumbled on a video about prepping meals ahead that yielded a dish I could easily make for dinner.

The recipe
Weekday Meal-prep Pesto Chicken and Veggies from tasty.co.

Ingredient changes
Other than making half the recipe, the only change I made was swapping out the poisonous, awful tomato for delightful, yummy red and yellow bell peppers.

Ease (or not) of prep
The worst part of prepping this dish was chopping everything. Chopping chicken, chopping ends off beans, chopping peppers. I think I just hate cutting boards.

I also added a step to my prep. Someone in the comments of the recipe mentioned that you should blanch your beans before throwing them in the pan so I looked up a video for instructions and did that.

From chopping ingredients to sitting down to eat, it probably took about 45 minutes. It’s no chicken-dumped-in-the-slow-cooker but it’s no 3-hour-lasagne-rolls either.

The Boyfriend Test: Pass
Jeff really liked it (who’s surprised?). He loves beans so there was no way he wouldn’t devour this. As is occasionally the case, he got my last few bites as well.

Picky Eater Test: Soft pass
Generally speaking, I liked this dish. Chicken good, peppers good, beans good, however; I find pesto sauce can be hit and miss for me and I didn’t like it here. I don’t have a specific criticism of it, i just found it kinda meh. The next time I make this dish (which I imagine I’ll do more often when beans are in season and I can get fresh local ones), I’ll try a different sauce. Maybe a teriyaki or marinara. This is the sort of dish I’ve been wanting to make so I’m going to work on perfecting it.

Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower

I have wanted to try roasted cauliflower for a long time. I like raw cauliflower (with dip, obviously) so it seems like a natural step to add cheese.

The recipe
Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower from tasty.co.

I made it as a side for chicken, which I fried with salt and pepper. I have no recipe for that, I just made it the way we like it.

Ingredient changes
The only thing I did differently was half the recipe. I’m always suspicious of huge quantities of a thing I might not like (if I do like it though, watch out, because I’m about to fill the freezer with it).

Ease (or not) of prep
Dump ingredients in a bag, shake ’em up, bake it. Probably took about 20 minutes to chop cauliflower, mix everything, and get it in the oven so thumbs up from me.

The Boyfriend Test: PASS
Jeff freaking loved this. He ate so fast I had to ask if he actually chewed it.

Picky Eater Test: Fail
I, on the other hand, did not enjoy it. I didn’t like the breading and I found each bite mushy. I thought the breading would crisp up more but it was just soggy vegetable with Italian seasoning. Jeff was more than happy to finish mine.

Jeff’s mom suggested I try again with a new recipe so I’m going to try something a friend of mine suggested. I’m going to put a bit of distance between attempts though; if my second try comes out mushy as well, I might be done with cauliflower forever.

The Curmudgeonly Cook: Mexican Vacation Edition!

I certainly didn’t intend to take a month-long hiatus from writing but apparently that’s what happens when I go on vacation! My sister got married in Mexico so, you know, twist my rubber arm to go hang out on a beach for a week!

Jeff and I were both so excited as we prepared to depart. He was excited to get away from work, eat new foods, and spend time at the open bar. I was excited to laze about in the sun wearin my cute new bathing suits, go snorkeling, and, most importantly, not have to cook for a seven whole days!

I am not an adventurous eater, like Jeff, but I tried a few new things. The food on our resort was excellent, especially at the a la cartes (keeping true to my stubborn palette, my favourite my the Italian restaurant. As always, you can’t hurt my feelings with bread, cheese, and pasta). Jeff and my stepdad enjoyed the Steakhouse best. My mom couldn’t contain herself for this little cream puff thing they had at the buffet. We literally went to the buffet after having dinner at an a la carte, just to get a cream puff.

The only foods of which I remembered to take pictures were desserts. Did I ever tell you about the time Jeff’s mom delivered me an entire cheesecake? I’m just saying, If there’s cheese in cake form, I’m there.

The cheesecake in Mexico was delicious (though, I must say right now, not as good as Ruth’s. And I’m not just saying that because she reads the blog. Ruth makes the best damned cheesecake I’ve ever had, no joke!). I had cheesecake at the Steakhouse and it was the perfect dessert to my meal. I prefer a graham cracker crust but the softer shell was also good.

My favourite dessert of the trip was the cannolis at the Italian restaurant. The shell was crunchy but not overly messy and the filling was so creamy and not overpoweringly sweet. It was such a perfect, light dessert after a heavy meal of pasta and bread.

For the life of me, I can’t remember what I had for dessert at the Mexican restaurant but I know Jeff had ice cream. He said it was good. I had ice cream at the buffet a couple times; it has a different texture than what we’re used to but that’s probably because it’s actual iced cream and not some weird edible oil product that comes out of a machine at Dairy Queen.

The meal served at my sister’s wedding was probably the best thing we ate the whole vacation. The appetizer was goat cheese and tomato slices, of which Jeff didn’t eat much (he likes cheese as an ingredient but not as a slice to bite into, and we both hate tomatoes). I smeared the cheese on a dinner roll (this same thing was served to us at the Mexican restaurant) and it was soOOooOo good. It was so delicious that I pillaged extra dinner rolls from my neighbour’s plates (with their permission, of course).

The main course was steak with vegetables. I know steak-eaters will hate this but I’m a well-done sort of girl so I traded the middle of my steak to Jeff for the more cooked edges of his.

Again, for some reason, I can’t remember what we had for dessert. Whatever it was, I’m sure it was yummy.

We weren’t there for a day before Jeff said to me, “From now on, we are doing this every year.” To which I responded, “Uh… yeah-huh!!” We had a lot of fun. The resort was lovely, the staff were so helpful and friendly, the food was delicious, and the beach was gorgeous! The sun was a bit of a jerk but I’ll trade an aggressive sunburn to be free of the burden of the kitchen any day.

The Curmudgeonly Cook: Jeff’s Mom Edition

Are you suffering from an intense hatred of cooking? Do you have symptoms such as decreased stamina for grocery shopping, sore back from hauling bags of food into the apartment, cramped fingers from chopping vegetables, and lost time where you could be doing anything else? If so, we have the remedy for you. Introducing Jeff’s mom, commonly known as “Ruth.” With Ruth, you can forget all your cooking woes! Ruth will ease your suffering and send fully-cooked meals right to your door. Chili with bread bowls? No problem! Potato skins? A cinch! Chicken wings and sausage rolls? Coming right up! With one dose of Ruth, you will be able to feed you and your partner for at least a week! Call now and we’ll throw in a large dish of pasta with cheese, absolutely free! But wait, there’s more. Call in the next three minutes and we’ll send our exclusive delivery system, Jeff’s dad, or “John” to not only deliver your meals but pick up the dishes when you’re finished. All this for the low, low price of you-didn’t-even-have-to-ask! Warning: side effects may include giant portions of delicious foods, full bellies, and excess time to engage in hobbies. Ruth does not take responsibility for snarky attitude from delivery personnel or terrible dad jokes. Ask The Curmudgeonly Cook if Ruth is right for you.

I hate cooking.

I hate standing in the kitchen for any length of time, I hate chopping vegetables, I hate handling meat, I DESPISE doing dishes, I hate cooking. So you can imagine my reaction when my boyfriend responded to my desire to order pizza with, “maybe we should try to cook more often.”

He’s not wrong. Take out is expensive and generally terrible for you, so I agree with him that we should prepare our own meals more often. The trouble is, I already do all the cooking. I do the grocery shopping, I put everything away after hauling it inside, I wash, chop, and portion vegetables in advance to make meal prep easier, and then I stand in the kitchen every night and assemble the meal. Asking me to cook more is suggesting I become a professional chef. So I countered his “cook more often” statement with two requests of my own: “new recipes can’t be super complicated, and you have to help me.” After some discussion, we agreed that I will still do the shopping and prep but he’ll help me cook evening meals and he’ll be my sous chef on weekends. None of this ever lets him weasel out of doing the dishes.

It’s been about a week since we had that conversation and so far, I’ve made three really freaking good meals. I’m actually quite surprised. I mean, I’m not a novice chef; I have nice cookware, I know what the knife with holes in it is for, and I know my way around a slow cooker, but I would never have thought I could just pluck a recipe from the internet and get it right on my first try.

I decided to start this blog as a sort of recipe book, a way of keeping track of our successes and failures, and maybe hear from a few other begrudging chefs as well. I promise never to bury the lead and always include the source of the recipe right away. I’ll mention changed ingredients, I’ll talk about the ease (or not) of prep, and I’ll let you know if it passes the Boyfriend Test. I’ll write when we try something new but I won’t bore you with the details of meals from the freezer when I can’t find the energy or the gumption for anything fancier.

One last disclaimer: I am slowly learning about and practicing HAES (Health at Every Size) so any comments discussing/encouraging dieting or weight loss will be deleted. I am not cooking in order to conform to any diet, I am not trying to lose weight, I am simply trying to make delicious meals for my partner and me. If you have any questions about HAES or why I insist on no diet talk, I am more than happy to elaborate.

My first post will be about the first dish in this experiment: Baked Potato Soup. Spoiler alert: it was excellent!