What's Cooking?

When Matt and I got married and I finally joined him in Texas, he bought me a cookbook as a welcome gift. Or maybe he was hoping it would inspire me to actual learn to cook. Alas, I took one flip through the pages and ran for the hills.

This cookbook is intense. It teaches you how to make your own tortillas... and lard. When on earth am I going to need to make my own lard? I'm still not sure how to use lard. Or even sure if I want to. So it promptly went onto a shelf, then into a box, then into the back corner of the closet with all the other boxes that we failed to unpack for the next four years.

Then I got a new cookbook stand, and this book is so pretty and colorful, it went on display. Because apparently I like to look at it, just not in it. Just like I enjoy the idea of cooking, then get extremely paranoid and intense once I'm standing at the stove. This weekend, though, Matt happened to pick up the book and started leafing through it. Along with being a cookbook, it's a little walk through time as the history of Tex-Mex is described and names of Texas restaurants are dropped. Pretty cool, actually.

The more he read and told me about, the better it sounded. So with sticky notes in hand, he marked a few recipes that seemed doable. And foolishly, foolishly, I actually decided that I'm going to try and cook my way through this cookbook. Not Julie/Julia style. I have no need to make every recipe (ahem, lard). But I figure, once a week, why not give it a shot? Some of the pages we marked are for sauces or dry rubs, while others are full-blown entrees. There are even a few desserts in there, so I have a nice range to work with. Plus this will help me accomplish my other goal: becoming a homemaker. I figure, if I'm not going to have a job, I can at least make life at home for Matt as easy as possible. He shouldn't have to go to work all day and then come home and cook dinner, vacuum, etc etc. But this is another story. Back to the cookbook.

We started yesterday. First recipe attempt: huevos rancheros and homemade refried beans (actually two recipes - double points!) I knew I was in trouble when the grocery store I went to didn't have serrano peppers. Immediately I remembered why I didn't like this blasted cookbook to begin with. But fortunately Matt located some on his way home from work. I was all set to go, ingredients laid out on the counter, cookbook propped up, and then Violet needed some love. So my goal of cooking Matt dinner turned into watching Matt cook dinner while I attended to our child. But at least I did the prep work, right? And helped clean up. And ate it. All.

Okay, the picture doesn't make it look the most appetizing. But do you know how hard it is to photograph food? Besides, it was delish. My many compliments were heaped on the chef. My favorite part of the evening was when I had to google huevos rancheros to figure out how to serve it (tortilla on bottom, then eggs and sauce... sorry, I've never eaten this before). The sauce was thinner than I expected and spicy (we both made the mistake of rubbing our noses after handling the serranos, even after we washed our hands), but not too spicy once it was paired with the eggs. The beans were flavorful, thick and creamy-textured. The eggs were perfectly runny (and since Matt is in charge of cooking all the eggs in our household, perhaps I should have realized he was always destined to cook this meal). Best of all, we have enough leftovers for me to attempt and improvise a rockin' bean dip for tomorrow.

Tonight's menu (because I'm on a kick now) is Chili Mac. I was going to make the Betty Crocker recipe to  use up some elbow macaroni we have in the pantry until I stumbled across the chili mac recipe in the Tex-Mex cookbook and realized it was meant to be. So I'm headed back to the grocery store today because the recipe calls for a taco seasoning packet or you can make your own taco seasoning and that seems like a challenge I just have to take on. This time I really really want to be the one manning the stove, so hopefully my Little Friend will comply. Next week (or at some point in the future) I'm going to tackle Mexican Wedding Cookies, and this crazy cake flan thing that is supposed to magically invert itself in the oven so while you pour the cake batter in first and then the flan, when you flip it over the flan has mysteriously migrated to the top. I know. Photographic evidence will be required.

We'll see how long I last in this challenge. Two recipes in one day is pretty impressive, though. And recipes two days in a row makes me rather proud. Hopefully the fall isn't just around the corner. Of course, now that I've told all of you my intentions, you can be my cheering (or jeering) squad and keep me going. Perhaps I can even invite you over for dinner one day. We can all try the magical inverted flan cake together.