I'm not cooking for Thanksgiving (and my family is thankful)

I'm not cooking this Thanksgiving. The truth is I've never cooked Thanksgiving dinner. I feel kind of guilty admitting that.

I'm not a total slacker. I have brought side dishes to share on Thanksgiving -- I'm pretty good at Jello pretzel salad and green bean casserole. But I've never cooked a turkey. Never even bought a turkey. I have no secret family recipes that I slave over. Mike's grandmother once gave me her recipe for sausage stuffing and swore me to secrecy over its contents, but I don't think "Brown the sausage, mix it with Stove Top" is really mum-worthy.

This year we are celebrating Thanksgiving dinner with Mike's dad. He is taking care of all the food (and by "taking care" I mean "ordering and picking up from the country club") I feel guilty. If I were a good daughter-in-law, I probably would have offered to cook. Although, given my culinary history, perhaps not cooking is really more of a gift.

Having said that, next year, I am making Thanksgiving dinner. All of it. Well, most of it. At least the turkey. And the cranberries with orange zest. In fact, the menu for Turkey Day 2014 that is rolling around in my head is already making my mouth water:

• Turkey (duh) -- and I even know to take out those yucky inside parts
• The afore mentioned cranberries with orange zest
• Mashed potatoes and gravy (which might come from a jar. I don't think I can handle scratch gravy the first year)
• Green bean casserole (the Durkee French Fried Onions recipe, no fancified version)
• Mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top - Charlie's favorite
• King's Hawaiian Rolls
• Honeyed carrots (after I ask my friend Jane how to make them again)
• Fall fruit salad (another Jane creation that involves apples, pears, raisins, honey and ginger)
• Roasted root vegetable stew -- This one I might have to buy. I tasted it from Killer Tofu at the Edible Indy launch party 10 days ago and I'm still thinking about how good it was. Amazingly, it had beets in it and I loved it.
• Some lentil-pea-pebble crockpot something or other that I don't remember what it's called from U-Relish Farms, but that I tried at Edible Indy and is another one I'm still thinking about.
• Pumpkin pie (Robbie's favorite)
• Chocolate chip pecan pie. Not sure where that came from, but it just popped into my head and it sounds SO good, doesn't it?

Wow. Writing all that down makes the prospect of having pizza for dinner tonight so, so very sad. Sigh. Anyway, I have one year to learn how to cook all this stuff and my family has one year to secure an invitation to dinner elsewhere.

Are you cooking for Thanksgiving? What's on the menu?

4th Frog presents "Baked potato soup & other kitchen disasters"

If you've been following along this blog for a while, it will not come as a surprise to you that I am not a great cook. I don't like to cook because I'm not very good at it. So where will you find me this Saturday, August 10 at 3pm and 5pm? On the Red Gold Cooking Stage at the Indiana State Fair of course.

Picture me here!

Fear not, there will be no actual cooking going on. Instead, I will be presenting 20-30 minutes worth of go-ahead-and-laugh-real-life-stories of my own kitchen missteps. By the end, you'll probably agree that it's a misstep just to let me set foot in the kitchen.

What can you expect to hear? Classics such as "Double Amputee Barbie," "Cajun Tuna Surprise," and of course "Baked Potato Soup...or How I Almost Burned the House Down."

Those who gather to have their funny bones tickled at my expense (or let's be honest, who just happen to sit down to enjoy the air conditioning in the Dupont Food Pavilion) will also be treated to tales of "Cookies for the Mean Lady" and "Graham Cracker Steak"and more.

I have to thank Indiana Family of Farmers (IFOF) for the heads up about this opportunity and the Indiana State Fair for its willingness to let a hot mess like me step onto its cooking stage.

Again, I'll be there on Saturday, August 10 at 3pm and 5pm.

As if the chance to laugh at, er...with me is not enough, here are some other reasons you'll want to be at the Indiana State Fair:

Note: Thanks to IFOF for the tickets and hosting us at the Fair on Monday, when these pictures were taken. We can't wait to be back in a few days!

World's largest popcorn ball

Can-structions made with canned goods to be donated to Gleaners Food Bank

Free catch & release fishing for the kids

Cheese carving!

And of course the food! There's nothing quite like eating a Hoosier Ribeye Sandwich downwind from the cattle barn. My other personal must-haves are the pork burger (from Indiana Pork, of course), hot buttered corn from the Lions Club booth, ice cream from Indiana Dairy's red barn Dairy Bar and, if I'm being truthful, one funnel cake from any number of pop-up shops set up on the grounds.

Seriously, I love the Indiana State Fair...and I'd love it if you were there on Saturday to cheer on my small piece of it.

Homemade potato soup -- or how I almost burned the house down

Occasionally, I get to feeling domestic. I make menus and go grocery shopping based on those menus and do things like plan to cook from scratch. When. Will. I. Learn?

Tonight's dinner plan called for homemade potato soup.

As I scanned the recipe, I noted that it called for bacon. Originally, I planned to use that pre-cooked bacon. But all the reviews talked about how the bacon fat imparted such great flavor to the soup.

I must remember reviews on recipe sites are typically written by people who can cook. And I cannot cook.

Blindly optimistic, I bought the real bacon. Fast forward to 4:15pm today. I put the bacon in a pan and turned the burner on high. I stirred it a bit and then put a lid on the pan so the grease wouldn't splatter. While the bacon was cooking, I turned to chop the onion, which would be sauteed in the bacon fat.

But when I lifted the lid of the pan to toss the onion in, flames shot about 2 feet into the air, licking the microwave. Expletive, expletive, expletive.

I had enough presence of mind not to put water on a grease fire. So I reached for the lid, which I'd dropped when the flames appeared, and attempted to put it on the burning pan. I got it sort of on the pan, but not all the way. I grabbed a dish towel and tried to put the lid on the pan. Instead of suffocating the flames, the lid slid all the way off, the flames reached higher and I made a run for it with the pan.

We're having some construction done on the back porch and the back door is blocked (a situation which will be remedied ASAP), so there I was, holding onto a dishtowel-wrapped pan handle, flames shooting out, running for the front door, screaming for someone to open it. Just as Annie opened the door, I could feel the fire on my thumb and pointer finger and my feet flew out from underneath me.

The flaming pan went flying out the door (thankfully!) and I landed on my arse. Unfortunately, the pan landed on the landscaping where the dry leaves are collected. So now the kitchen was not in danger of going up in flames, but the landscaping and front porch was. 

Annie and I ran with bowls of water to put it out, screaming over the insistent chirping of the smoke alarms (yep, they work!). I finally came enough to my senses to turn on the hose and drag it to the mostly smoky leaves.

So here we are, 90 minutes later. My hand hurts like a son-of-a-gun (waiting for the 800mg of ibuprofen to kick in). We have no dinner. The house smells like burnt bacon. The microwave has a smoky gray film on it.

And I'm sending Mike out to buy a fire extinguisher. I would tell him to buy a new pan, too, but I'm not allowed in the kitchen anymore.

Culinary progress report

Last week I posted about a menu planning service that I signed up for. I selected and shopped for five different meals. Because we were out of town for a funeral for a few days and everyone but me had a stomach virus, I've only made two of the five meals.

The first was crispy baked fish. I was surprised at how easy it was to make. I've never cooked fish at home before. I used frozen tilapia, so it wasn't anything exotic. I don't remember what was in the "crispy" part except Italian bread crumbs. I served it with steamed broccoli and canned peaches.

We gave the fish about a B-. Mike and I thought the breading needed a little more kick to it. Like maybe some pepper or something with a little spice. But it was so easy to make that I'll definitely try it again.

Tonight we had baked penne with ricotta and spinach. Robbie came up as I was making it and asked "what smells so good." I don't think he's ever asked that before -- unless I was baking brownies.

I thought this dish was very good, but everyone else only gave it a B to a B+. It called for crushed red pepper flakes that I left out because I didn't think the boys would like that. Turns out they weren't so keen to eat pasta without red sauce, so next time I'll put the red pepper in. When I make it again, it will definitely be a weekend because this took a while to make. The recipe says 25 minutes for prep. I think it took me longer because I'm not a seasoned cook (pun intended).

Tomorrow's dinner -- drumsticks with lemon pepper marinade -- is already in the fridge. The meat for Tuesday's slow cooker beef tacos is defrosting. Wednesday will probably be leftovers. I might hurt myself if I make dinner four nights in row (five if you count last night's hot ham and cheese sandwiches).

All in all, I'm proud of myself. But there are some things I've figured out:

1. My kitchen cabinets are in desperate need of cleaning out. I found 4 dinosaur cookie cutters, but no teaspoon measures. I need a colander bigger than a grapefruit.
2. I need to read through the recipes and do some prep before I jump in on the first step. Tonight, the onions and garlic were done cooking and I hadn't even cleaned and chopped the fresh spinach yet.
3. I have no idea what the difference between white wine vinegar and balsalmic vinegar is. I'm not sure what a dutch oven is -- but dinner turned out ok without one tonight.
4. Some of the side dishes are a little high maintenance. I'll try making them once -- but I'm thinking frozen sweet potato fries will work just as well as hand-cut sweet potato fries. 
5. I plugged in 6 servings for this week's menus. I think next time I'll plan for 4 servings each. The boys don't eat that much and while I'm ok with leftovers, there can be too much of a good thing.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to share of my culinary adventures. Right now I'm working on actually making a meal. Maybe in a few weeks, I'll be ready to make and photograph the food.

This mom's a-cookin!

Or I will be as soon as I get back from the store.

"What's for dinner?" is my second most dreaded question. The first is "Do I have any socks?" But I digress. Back to the food...

I don't really enjoy cooking. Part of the reason is that it seems I have about 4 meals in my repertoire. So last week, when I saw a menu-planning deal from Relish! on Eversave.com, I decided to go for it. Just $16 for six months worth of customized menu plans and corresponding grocery lists.(I had referral credit from Eversave, so I got the deal for free which made it a no-brainer.)

Today I logged onto Relish! to build my menu for the week. The process was pretty simple. There were 15 entree/side pairs to choose from.(New menus are put up every Thursday.) There were also 10 freezer meals to choose from. And if those 25 meals didn't offer enough variety, there was a list of meal ideas broken down by categories like: Kid-friendly, Lower Calorie, Slow Cooker, Vegetarian, Simple Gourmet, Budget-friendly -- and more. I did have to call the customer support number to figure out that if you offer over the letter code at the end of the meal idea, you can figure out which category it belongs to.

Here's the menu I put together:

• Drumsticks with Lemon-Pepper Marinade | Almond Rice Pilaf
• Slow Cooker Beef Tacos | Dinner Salad with Homemade Ranch Dressing
• Crispy Baked Fish | Creamy Slaw with Golden Raisins
• Grilled Chicken Sandwiches With Cilantro Tapenade | Sweet Potato Fries
• Baked Penne with Ricotta and Spinach | Baguette With Dill Butter

If we end up just loving one of the meals, I can go back into my Relish! account and mark it as a favorite to add to my meal plan whenever I want.

I could have chosen as many menu items as I wanted, but they recommend starting with 5 to keep your grocery list and budget reasonable. You can choose how many servings you want -- 2, 4, 6, or 8. Relish! scales the recipe for you and then builds your grocery list.

The grocery list organized by section of the store and is marked with a code for which recipe the item will be used in. That way if I decide not to make the drumsticks (A), I just go through the list and cross off everything that is marked with an A.

Is that not awesome?! Even better, I found a free iPhone app that will keep my menu and grocery list as close as my phone.

The good news for any of you kitchen-challenged folks out there is that though the Eversave deal is over, SavvySource.com is offering the same deal right now! You'll pay $16 for six months of customized menu planning. And if you "like" the offer on Facebook, you'll get another $1 discount! For a fraction of  what it costs to go out to dinner, you can get six months of just-right-for-your-family menu ideas, recipes and grocery lists.

Let me know if you try it. I'll let you know how our meals are this week. And if you're one of those people who are never at a loss for what to fix for dinner and who love to cook, I'm free next Tuesday.

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad cook

I love the Food Network. If I were allowed to pick television channels from an a la carte menu, the Food Network would be one of three that I would choose. (The other two would be MSNBC so I could watch "Lock Up" and Discovery Health for "Untold Stories of the E.R.")

But just as standing in a garage does not make one a car, watching the Food Network does not make a person a gourmet chef. I'm such a non-chef that I couldn't get a job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab. (Spongebob, anyone?)

I'm pretty much a utilitarian cook. I cook because we have to eat. But if I ever win the lottery, the first thing I'm doing is hiring a personal chef.

My first food fiasco happened on my 12th birthday. My mom was at work and I was home baking my own birthday cake. I don't remember exactly what went wrong, except that everything went wrong and I called my mom several times that day in tears about the cake.

Then, before Mike and I were married, I made dinner for us in my apartment one night. I was trying to make use of what was in the pantry. So I took some canned tuna, mixed it with some barbecue sauce and patted it in a pan. Then, I slapped a couple of pieces of fat-free cheese on top of it and put the whole thing into the oven. When it came out, looking like a kid's rain slicker had melted onto the tuna, Mike took one look at it and promptly carried the whole mess, pan and all, to the dumpster in the parking lot.

It's not that I don't know how to follow a recipe; I do. But sometimes my downfall is in the technique required for certain recipes. Other times, it's because I don't really understand food well enough to what flavors complement other flavors and what textures are appealing with what foods.

This was tonight's dinner (avert your eyes if you have a weak stomach):

It actually came from a recipe. But anyone who knows how to cook probably would have taken one look at that recipe and known it was going to turn out like a tight perm on short hair - hideous!

Once I figured out that dinner as I had planned it was inedible (I did taste it and it tasted a bit like spicy wallpaper paste seasoned with tree bark), it was time for Plan B. Tonight's Plan B -- when you cook like I do, every night has a Plan B just in case -- was take and bake pizza.

Here's the other problem with cooking. You have to pay attention. I was lying here on the couch, enjoying relative quiet and thinking "It's too bad that crockpot dinner was so terrible, because honestly it smells good."

As the good smell got stronger and stronger, I realized it wasn't the crockpot vomitus that was fragrancing the kitchen. It was the pizza that I put in the oven AND FORGOT ABOUT.

Insert a few expletives (this is a rated PG blog after all). A quick run over to the oven led me to find this:

A little well done, extra crunchy, but not inedible. Someone else's kids might have turned their noses up if this was served for dinner. But mine know that this is good as it gets some nights. So they ate it. . . and asked if they could have ice cream for dessert.