Mom: So, any new recipes for me?
Me: Have I told you about my pesto chicken recipe? It's super easy
Mom: No. What's in it?
Me: Sliced zucchini
Mom: I don't like zucchini
Me: Well fine, you don't really need the zucchini. Then it's just roma tomatoes, pesto and chicken
Mom: Do you make the pesto
Me: ITS LIKE YOU DONT EVEN KNOW ME! No, I just buy it from the grocery store.
Mom: I dunno, this recipe seems like it has a lot of ingredients
Me: Mom, it's got 3 ingredients, 4 if you include the foil!
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
1st Recipe: Pesto Chicken (or, my near-adventure with salmonella)
So, my cooking adventures started off with a simple recipe I found here. I figured it was something I could handle as it only required 4 ingredients, and the only preparation that was required was "slicing" something I figured even someone of such limited culinary skills such as myself could master. I bought the ingredients (including store-bought pesto--like I would make pesto from scratch, or anything near scratch!) and set out to the whole cooking thing. I bought heavy duty aluminum foil for the packets (lets be honest--I totally would've bought the foil packets [lazy!] but they didn't sell them/I couldn't find them). When I got home, the chicken breasts seemed a little frozen, but I figured it wouldn't be a problem since I'd be cooking it anyway (I told you I was new to this cooking thing!).
A few minutes of cutting and folding, 25 minutes in the oven, and voila!
Yes, I thought it looked so impressive, I took a picture. I blame C (she literally photographs all the food she makes). I also thought it tasted pretty good, until I looked down and saw that the middle was pink. After I stopped eating (due to my fear of contracting salmonella) and told C about my cooking misadventures, she told me to microwave it to finish the whole completely cooking it thing, and it was still pretty good (and no longer posed the threat of food-borne illnesses). As I tend to do when I discover something I like, I then beat it into the ground by making it 8 days in a row. I mean, I still like it, but I figured I should try something new, while I will recount in my next entry.
A few minutes of cutting and folding, 25 minutes in the oven, and voila!
The Beginning
So, first off, a little about me. I grew up in a house where my mom rarely "cooked." Oftentimes, I'd ask my mom what was for dinner, and more often not, the answer was "potstickers" and by "potstickers" I mean the ones that came in large bags from what was formerly known as Price Club (now costco) and only required boiling in a pot of water. My mom did go through a brief period where she decided to cook more so "when you[me] go to college, your entire dorm won't know me as the mom who didn't cook." That didn't last long (and yes, my freshmen dorm knew that my mom didn't cook). My mom and I share a deep-seated belief that cooking is just too much trouble, and as often as not, not nearly worth it.
This attitude has taken me far, including way too many stops at the many fast and fast casual dining establishments in downtown Chicago and an expanded waistline. My reluctance to cook, combined with my deep, intense dislike for cleaning dishes (and living in an apartment for 4.5 years without a dishwasher) meant that if it wasn't ordered somewhere else (or a lean cuisine, or something a friend cooked) I didn't eat it.
Well, I am actually now changing my ways. Now what would prompt such a thing, you may ask:
Friends: One of my friends, L is an excellent cook, and she keeps insisting that it's not that hard (L, I still don't believe you). I've seen my friend C go from someone seemingly incapable of following a simple recipe (seriously, we have pictures of her hacking away at butter because the recipe said to chop it) to someone who cooks amazing meals from recipes and everything!
Family (no, not my mom): My sister has transformed from someone, who like my mom and myself did not cook to someone who, for thanksgiving this year, baked dinner rolls from scratch (yeah, my mom and I thought that was insane).
Trainer: Due to the previously mentioned expanding waistline, I got a trainer at the gym. When we talked about nutrition, she asked me what I was eating. I told her (at that time, it was healthier, filled with things that fit within a calorie-restrictive diet, but nonetheless required no cooking) what I did, and she asked me why I didn't cook. Well, she seemed at least marginally horrified by my statement that "I don't cook." She then suggested some simple recipe-type things requiring no real clean up(that looking back upon now, probably sound a lot like what I do now), and my response was, "well, I'd still have to clean the plate and silverware." Yeah, she looked at me kind of funny after that.
Even after all that, I continued my tradition (of laziness!), until after this past Christmas. I stayed at C's house, and she cooked an amazing meal of some kind of fish cooked in foil packets. I realized that if I cooked in foil packets, I wouldn't have pots/pans to clean up, and what I could make could taste good and be super-healthy. Now, I would never even attempt the recipe C made that night (first, it was out of a cookbook, and I don't even own one of those and second, it involved mincing garlic, and I don't own one of those), but I thought there might be recipes out there (and by out there, I mean on the internets) that would require essentially no prep work and would cook in foil. Well, I found one such recipe (which almost gave me salmonella) and liked it; then figured out something largely by myself. I then had the following conversation with L:
L: pretty soon you are going to own a cookbook
This attitude has taken me far, including way too many stops at the many fast and fast casual dining establishments in downtown Chicago and an expanded waistline. My reluctance to cook, combined with my deep, intense dislike for cleaning dishes (and living in an apartment for 4.5 years without a dishwasher) meant that if it wasn't ordered somewhere else (or a lean cuisine, or something a friend cooked) I didn't eat it.
Well, I am actually now changing my ways. Now what would prompt such a thing, you may ask:
Friends: One of my friends, L is an excellent cook, and she keeps insisting that it's not that hard (L, I still don't believe you). I've seen my friend C go from someone seemingly incapable of following a simple recipe (seriously, we have pictures of her hacking away at butter because the recipe said to chop it) to someone who cooks amazing meals from recipes and everything!
Family (no, not my mom): My sister has transformed from someone, who like my mom and myself did not cook to someone who, for thanksgiving this year, baked dinner rolls from scratch (yeah, my mom and I thought that was insane).
Trainer: Due to the previously mentioned expanding waistline, I got a trainer at the gym. When we talked about nutrition, she asked me what I was eating. I told her (at that time, it was healthier, filled with things that fit within a calorie-restrictive diet, but nonetheless required no cooking) what I did, and she asked me why I didn't cook. Well, she seemed at least marginally horrified by my statement that "I don't cook." She then suggested some simple recipe-type things requiring no real clean up(that looking back upon now, probably sound a lot like what I do now), and my response was, "well, I'd still have to clean the plate and silverware." Yeah, she looked at me kind of funny after that.
Even after all that, I continued my tradition (of laziness!), until after this past Christmas. I stayed at C's house, and she cooked an amazing meal of some kind of fish cooked in foil packets. I realized that if I cooked in foil packets, I wouldn't have pots/pans to clean up, and what I could make could taste good and be super-healthy. Now, I would never even attempt the recipe C made that night (first, it was out of a cookbook, and I don't even own one of those and second, it involved mincing garlic, and I don't own one of those), but I thought there might be recipes out there (and by out there, I mean on the internets) that would require essentially no prep work and would cook in foil. Well, I found one such recipe (which almost gave me salmonella) and liked it; then figured out something largely by myself. I then had the following conversation with L:
L: pretty soon you are going to own a cookbook
me: their recipes are too complicated
i prefer throwing shit into foil
L: haha
they should make that cookbook
"Shit in Foil"
me: no I should make that cookbook
L: you should
And thus the idea for this blog was born. My hope is that I will use this to chronicle my adventures in figuring out this whole food preparation using a heat source that is not my microwave
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)