Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Fifteen Weeks! Oh, and Also I Got a Haircut. And Made Chili

  To be completely fair, I DID take this first thing in the morning, when bloating after meals isn't an issue.

  I learned something today. Which is quite impressive for me, as it's not even noon yet, and usually I haven't done anything but watched Jay Leno and caught up on my favorite blogs by now. But this week I decided to give cooking a second chance. And by that I mean I decided to find some really easy recipes because this Chinese and Thai food stuff I used to make takes way, way too long and I'm lazy (by the way, if you have any recipes of the easy sort, I would love to have them). So, this week I am relying heavily on my crock pot.

  I used to have this strange notion that crock pot = no cooking. That's certainly how it is when I make chicken tortilla soup--just dump it all in the pot and let it cook all day. Yay! But, apparently, the little cookbook my crock pot came with does not believe in this philosophy. This morning, attempting to make chili with my crock pot, I was forced to BROWN and DRAIN the beef (three pounds of it, yeesh, which is not a great smell first thing in the morning when you're preggo), chop up tons of things that made my eyes water, AND soften the dry pinto beans by boiling and draining them (why the crap couldn't I just use canned in the first place is my question there). Then I realized McKay threw out my garlic (he hates garlic, so I think this was done maliciously), our stupid spice rack has no cumin (or oregano, or thyme . . . seriously, stupidest spice rack ever), and somehow I hadn't noticed that I needed tomatoes (duh, Julia) (I win the Most Parentheses In One Sentence Ever Award). So, after a shopping trip where they like to hide garlic that is still in clove-form and chopping up said garlic, the whole cooking dealio took two hours. TWO HOURS. I might as well have stuck with my complicated Chinese dishes.

  Yeah, from now on, chili comes out of a can. Period.

  That was an extremely boring story, wasn't it? Haha, I also win Longest Ramble on Lame Story Award. Man, I'm on a roll! I wonder what other awards I could win before noon . . .

  And seriously, give me your easy recipes. Now.

1 comment:

  1. You look great Julia! And may I say that you pull of the mom-cut extremely well. :)
    Rob and I too, go to our crock pot when we don't feel like cooking. Its cool because we've never used a recipe (something that I'm always skeptical and frankly a little nervous about but Rob insists "Trust me honey, its going to taste good"), and lo and behold, somehow it always turns out good. I've learned that basically any meat+some pre-mixed seasoning+veggies+water/broth=yummy.
    As far as easy recipes, I have frequently been turning to a cookbook I got from my bridal shower entitled Fresh Food Fast. It also says on the cover "5 ingredient, 15 minute recipes" and although I have found this to be a lie (at least for me), I think even the most cooking challenged person wont spend 2 hours on any of these recipes. It says 5 ingredients, and maybe that's only counting the big stuff and not the spices, but altogether you might see 5-10 things listed, which for the lazy chef, is a beautiful thing. :)
    Do you like pork chops? If so I'll give you an easy recipe for them from that book. (Also comes with a nifty side dish recipe on the same page) I just made them a few weeks ago, and they were bomb.

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