Whats Cookin' Good Lookin'?

Its almost Friday! How has your week been? Mine has been surprisingly productive despite the cold temps outside. One of the biggest goals here in the Fashionably Domestic home has been to stay warm!

I made the family a yummy meal this evening, full of fresh vegetables. We go through so many fruits and vegetables in this house.

Italian Sausage and Veggie Pasta

1 pkg. Italian Chicken Sausage 

1 Red Bell Pepper

A few tablespoons minced garlic

Splash (or 4) of white wine

1 Summer Squash, chopped

1 Zucchini, chopped

2 Heirloom Tomatoes, quartered 

1 can diced tomatoes, 15oz

Kale or Spinach(as preferred)

Italian Seasoning

Dried Minced Onion

Dried Fennel 

Dash of Milk

Salt and Pepper

Organic or Gluten Free rotini pasta

Fill pot with water and bring to a boil for pasta.

Heat pan, add olive oil and saute sausage and red pepper until peppers are soft. Add garlic and a few splashes of white wine and saute for a minute or two. Add squash and zucchini and cook until soft. Add can of tomatoes and season to taste with the garlic, onion, Italian seasoning and fennel. 

While that cooks, I sear the heirloom tomatoes in another pan then puree them in a food processor and add that to the pan of veggies and sausage. I also add a little water if it doesn't seem "saucy" enough for my taste. Add the greens, spinach or kale, dash of a milk and season as needed. Serve topped with red paper flakes and Parmesan cheese. 

If you can't tell, I'm a pinch of this and dash of that type cook so its difficult to really write out a detailed recipes. I owe that skill to my grandmother, truly one of the best home cooks I've ever met.

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In other news, Snuggle Bug is still on an obsessive carb binge. The positive thing is her doctor thinks it will help her gain weight, the down side is my bread machine is getting a workout and I just bought a waffle iron in hopes of saving money on her waffle habit. Fingers crossed it saves some money and who knows what new recipes I'll find on my new waffle making journey! 

Foray into slow cooking

I love to cook. I’m the kind of person that gets inspired and will spend hours in the kitchen creating meals. Usually my meals come out pretty good and my family is happy. But Pinterest has changed all that. Thanks to Pinterest and my foray into slow cooking, not very many good meals have been coming out of my kitchen lately.

Pinterest has been my latest obsession. I joined after my friend told me about it and didn’t think I would love it as much as I do.

So many recipes, craft ideas, home décor pictures and makeup tutorials to keep me busy for ages!

I stumbled upon a popular pin with a link to a blog that talked all about make ahead crockpot meals. Meaning, I could put everything raw into a bag and then into my freezer and then into my crockpot and be done. So easy! Between school, an almost 4y/o Snuggle Bug and my 18 week pregnant belly, easy sounded good!

So I went to the store and got everything needed to make six meals, three kinds. Beef stew, Italian Beef and BBQ Chicken. After lots of veggie cutting, meat cutting, seasoning and bagging I was ready to go…….six cheap meals in my deep freeze ready to go into the crock pot first thing in the morning.

I should have thought about this a bit more as I was following the recipes. No blanching of any veggies? Potatoes going in with meat to cook the entire 8 hours? “They’ll be fine” I thought. Not so much.

Night one, a few weeks ago, and I pull out my beef stew. Actually not bad. Soggy mushy potatoes and it needed a bit more meat and seasoning but overall decent. But still not as good as the one I can simmer on the stove that I’ve been making for years. We all ate it, the hubby actually seemed to enjoy it and only remarked that it needed a bit more beef. But it’s generally not hard to please his Army man palette after the years he’s spent eating MREs and DFAC cuisine.

Night two, the next week, BBQ chicken. “Is this supposed to be a soup?” I thought to myself as I looked into the simmering crock pot. I supposed this wouldn’t be going on the buns as I had originally planned. Taste tests showed that I needed to add a few more things to this meal to give it some flavor and those zucchini’s I had put in the bag were nowhere to be found in the crock pot.

Then we make it to tonight, Italian Beef. Toss it in and add the beef broth. Once again I come back and ask myself, “Is this a soup?” Once again, serving over bread may not be an option. So, with the help of a can of tomato sauce, bell peppers, carrots, celery, fresh garlic and seasoning, I turn this base into what eventually became a decent mock ragu. But it was still lacking something.

I couldn’t even finish it. Snuggle Bug took a few bites and wanted no part of it but she did enjoy the crusty Italian bread I served with it. The hubby, well he ate it.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Other reviewers raved about these meals and I was so looking forward to them being as good as people said. I don’t know what’s wrong but I’m thinking it may be time to give the slow cooker a rest for a while and pull out Mastering the Art of French Cooking again. Julia Child and I seem to be a better fit together than the crock pot and I.