30 Days of Home Cooking (Week 4)

I asked Jeffery what he's most looking forward to eating after this challenge.

"Greasy food."

The third week of the challenge I was really, really craving Chick-fil-a, this week I didn't really have any cravings, and I honestly still don't really have any cravings. We did end up saving money even though I like to buy fancy groceries. For us it was more that we wanted to challenge ourselves rather than we wanted to save money. After a week of eating out again, because I haven't been feeling like myself lately, I can say that I really don't enjoy restaurant eating as much as I used to. It's become more of a convenience thing to me, rather than an actual pleasure.

Anyway, here's what we ate.

We started out the week with a fried chicken recipe Jeffery wanted to try. My huge new wooden cutting board fell off the kitchen counter and onto the glass that was sitting in front of it, sending pieces of glass flying everywhere, so the chicken ended up pretty over cooked. The sauce however was pretty amazing, and we want to try making these again some night.

 Next I made a chicken stirfry with a spicy hoisin sauce. The key to a good stir fry is to cook it in batches, slightly under cooking the chicken, setting it aside while you cook the vegetables, and then adding it back in to finish cooking as the vegetables are finishing.

Next up I made another steak. I love steak, don't judge me. Jeffery and I tag teamed this one. He manned the stove while I did the grilling. His mushroom and onions were delicious in their red wine sauce.

For Henry's birthday party I grilled up some chicken and burgers and made him what I called the WWII cake. It was a German Chocolate cake with Chocolate Russian Buttercream. It was easily one of the best cakes I've ever had. I can't believe my little guy is already a year old.

Next is the tale of a dinner that just didn't go our way. Take a look at this picture. There's a pizza, there's hotdogs on bread slices, and there's lame french fries. I was feeling lazy so I tossed this pizza in the oven, we all sat down to eat, and Jeffery took a big bite into his first piece.

"This pizza is lame."

Odd, I thought. I put red pepper flakes and feta on it when it came out of the oven. Feta and red pepper flakes can make pretty much any pizza decent. I took a bite out of my piece.

Have you ever had a piece of pizza taste like nothing?

Unless you were lucky enough to get a piece of feta or red pepper, it literally tasted like nothing. Not even the kids wanted it.

Jeffery grabbed some hot dogs and fired up the grill, and I heated up the oven for fries. When it came time for buns, I found out I didn't have any left.

Apparently I forgot to get a picture of the amazing hamburgers we had for dinner one night. Just imagine, delicious burger patties covered in blue cheese and bacon. If Jeffery took a picture I'll insert it in here later.

Jeffery did have a picture of the burgers. I knew there was a reason I married him. The bacon on the burgers is from our road trip to the famous Benton's. Their products are used in restaurants around the country. This bacon was seriously fabulous. Their website is here if you're interested in reading a bit more about them.

For the last night, Jeffery requested I try this dish from my America's Test Kitchen Cookbook, Vietnamese Style Caramel Chicken Chicken. Here's the recipe posted somewhere without a paywall.

This was pretty darn good and the thighs were extremely tender.

So that's a wrap on our 30 Days of Home Cooking. It ended up not being as difficult as I thought it would be. The hardest part is when we're out late with the boys we weren't stopping for quick food somewhere so we'd have to plan to be home to make dinner, or we'd have late meals after I got the kids to bed. It is really easy to be a half hour from home at Lowe's and just stop for food while in Knoxville.

Since I'm so late posting this to Facebook I thought I'd update you that our second attempt at those chicken fingers was hilariously more successful than the first. Here's the recipe. I added some wildflower honey into the sauce this second time around because I like that additional sweet flavor. We actually just did chicken breast tenderloins instead of the whole chicken pieces because it's what we had on hand, but you have to reduce the cooking time to about 5 minutes. We just removed a piece and used a quick read thermometer.

As always,

Thanks for stopping by!

-Em