Happy Friday!

Well, Happy Friday everyone! 

After much consideration I have concluded I would be a very bad hausfrau indeed if didn't find time to blog about my wifely duties. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. 

That's what you do when you discuss cooking, right? Wink and nudge? Feels right to me. Anyway, despite my lack of training, inattention to detail and penchant toward over-seasoning (last week we threw away a whole pan of unreasonably salted oven fries), I have vowed to cook a real dinner for Husband every week night. After all, what else am I doing?

To chronicle my various successes and FAILURES in the kitchen, I'm going to recap the weekly menu here with The Good, The Bad and The Edible. Here goes...

 Shredded Beef and Sweet Potato Taquitos

from 

For the Love of Cooking

(Ok, so actually I made these last week, but as this is the first Allie in an Apron, I'll let it slide. How kind of me.)

The dish was PHENOMENAL. Husband even deemed it, "better than restaurant quality," which is an actual miracle coming from the guy whose range of food evaluation starts at nausea, and abruptly ends around "It's ok."

Success.

I made only two modifications from the original recipe just because I couldn't find the ingredients. I used a jar of canned green chile peppers instead of the Anaheim, and I used Sharp Cheddar cheese instead of the Cotija...whatever that is...and found the sharp cheddar to be a delicious contrast to the spicy beef and the sweetness of the sweet potato. I did end up liberally re-seasoning after I shredded the beef and returned it to the liquid in the pot because it just wasn't spicy enough (I used equal parts chili powder and ground red pepper), and I sprinkled some sugar on the sweet potato cubes to bring out the sweetness. Seriously, perfection.

Orzo with Peas, Carrots, Mushrooms and Parm

So, besides the cooking instructions for the orzo, I didn't really follow any sort of recipe for this one. I just kind of threw in whatever spare fiber I had laying around the kitchen- ala frozen peas and carrots and a can of mushrooms. Once everything was all warm and fuzzy...or just warm...I grated in a load of fresh parmesean cheese- after all, what DOESN'T taste better with parmesan? Ice cream? No. Melon? No. Pie? No. See, nothing. Nothing doesn't taste better with parm.

What?

I'm trying to distract you from my foul cooking with poor syntax.

Back to the foul cooking. The side, while colorful and consisting of multiple food groups, was absolutely tasteless. So we salted and peppered and parm'ed some more- to no avail! The dish was hopeless. I want to speak to the chef.

Homemade Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting

Alright, I know what you are thinking. When is a brownie with frosting merely "edible?" I'll tell you. (Because this is a blog and it would defeat the purpose not to.) A brownie with frosting is merely edible when 3,626 people have reviewed the recipe and rated it BETTER THAN ALAN RICKMAN WHISPERING YOUR NAME WHILE RECITING SHAKESPEARE. I had high expectations for these brownies, and they were good. But come on. A brownie recipe with 3,626 positive reviews should leave you gasping for breath and clutching your chest, not just reaching for another one. 

The frosting didn't disappoint though! But it would be hard to make a mixture of cream cheese, butter, sugar and vanilla taste bad. These are a few of my favorite things. 

So in all, dessert was good, but I didn't feel the earth move.

And that's what was cooking this week.