Yes. I did. I haven't actually cooked food, from scratch or close to it, in years. Really. I hate cooking. I hate it so much that I never do it. I kept deluding myself for years, telling myself first, that once I was married, I would want to cook more. Ha. Then I thought that once I had kids, I would want so much for them to be healthy and eat good food, that I would be willing to suffer cooking for them. Well. Not so much. I really HATE cooking. It took me about 25 years to figure out why. It's because I also hate most food. I am a really picky eater, and when I say picky, I really mean it. Here are some examples of food I do not like: hamburgers, steak, pizza with toppings, sauce on my spaghetti (unless the sauce has mushrooms in it, but usually I don't like mushrooms), all nuts, spicy food, less spicy food, food with flavor....Okay I'm starting to get sarcastic again. It's so easy. There is just so much I don't like. According to my mom, I have always been this way, ever since I was a baby and refused to eat peas (which I do actually like now).
Anyway, back to the whole cooking thing. I don't know what came over me. I just went into the kitchen to heat up this macaroni and cheese that my grandmother had made and I'd forgotten about in our fridge til Bill mentioned it. So I thought I'd see if it was salvageable (it was, very deliciously so). While I was in there, the girls were playing in the living room and they were actually playing together, instead of Karina fussing at Elena, "No, Boo boo, no!". Yes, she has nicknamed her. I hate it. So while they were playing, I didn't want to go back in there and disrupt it, so I started looking at the second cookbook from Jessica Seinfeld. I have her first one and I have made a bunch of recipes from it, way back years ago when I last cooked, when Karina was probably one or two. Mom had given me the second book, and I thought I remembered most of the stuff in it was harder, or took longer to make. Well, while I was browsing through this one, I saw this recipe and thought, I could totally do this now. It was 4pm. Sure, I could make lasagna noodles. I have leftover chicken I can use. We have cheese. We have all this stuff. I'll make this.
What the heck was I thinking????
So, I started with the water boiling and the lasagna noodles cooking. Easy enough, that's one thing I can do, cook noodles. Then I got out the leftover chicken (left over from my favorite Stouffer's microwave meal, Rigatoni with white meat chicken in a basil pesto sauce. I just never eat the chicken.) and cheese. I don't like ricotta, which the recipe called for, so I grated some Colby Jack and threw in a bunch of shredded cheddar too. We had parmesan and the garlic salt and I put that in. Oh and I almost forgot, the cauliflower puree. I had some of that frozen. Don't ask. So, mix mix, and start rolling it up in the lasagna noodles. It was supposed to be chicken cannelloni or something along those lines. You had to roll it up in the lasagna noodles. That was hard. The noodles were slippery and uncooperative. Into a pan, oven was already hot from the macaroni I was reheating, and then I had to put some tomato sauce around the noodle things. We didn't have any, except my favorite kind with mushrooms in it, which I was not wasting on a "maybe" meal. But, randomly, we had two cans of tomatoes. So I pureed them in the food processor and voila. Then I looked at how long it had to cook. 25-30 minutes. By this time it was 5pm. The recipe said "Quick!" and I think it said it would be done in about 45 minutes. Well it was well past that. See why I don't cook? Anyway, stuck it in the oven, and sat down to eat some macaroni. Meanwhile, Karina and Elena have moved into the kitchen and Elena's been clawing at my legs for most of the hour I was working, while Karina serenaded me with giggly stories. They were both hungry so I warmed up some plain noodles for Elena and then some pancakes for Karina. Finally the darn food was done. It actually tasted pretty good, and Karina asked to try it (yay!) and then she said SHE LIKED IT.
Total shock.
My pickier than me kid liked it.
She said it tasted like her favorite noodles (Stouffer's rigatoni with white meat chicken in a basil pesto sauce). I told her that was probably because of the chicken I had put in there. She even asked for MORE.
I should also mention that Bill worked late tonight and I figured he'd be home around 6, which is what he had told me, so I was all happy that he'd come home and have food waiting. Well by 630 I finally dragged the girls upstairs so I could shower and he finally came home around 645.
It was crazy. I'm exhausted! I seriously hate cooking. I'm glad it turned out, but I won't be cooking again for a while. Although I was thinking about trying to cook at least once a week, maybe not always something so difficult though. But I think I should at least try. We'll see. First I have to recover from tonight.
Now all my disclaimers. I'm not affiliated with any companies mentioned in this post. None of them paid me to say anything nice about them, these are just my honest opinions. I really DO love the Stouffer's Rigatoni with white meat chicken in a basil pesto sauce. Mmmmmmmmmm. Yummy. And I do really like Jessica Seinfeld's two cookbooks. I've made a bunch of the recipes from the first one (I think it's called "Deceptively Delicious". I have no idea what the second one is called and since I'm in bed with my feet up, I am not going down to the kitchen to look), including beet pancakes, which were really good and didn't taste like beets at all, they just turned pink. But again, didn't get paid or asked to say any of that. It's just what I think. Others may have different opinions.
