#16, 18 & 45 Finished

One of my challenges is to not eat fast food for three months. I just finished that one and I got to say, it was way easier than I though it would be. Not eating fast food is like switching from whole milk to 2%, after about a week you can’t tell the difference anymore. In the course of this challenge others are corresponding nicely and so challenges 16, 18 and 45 can all be checked off today. Challenge number 18, to make a new recipe once a week for a month and challenge number 45, to buy a new bottle of wine once a week for a month, fell into place as I tried to find meals for Erik and me to eat every night. At the very beginning of my fast food challenge I continued with our normal fall back meals at home, like hamburger helper and frozen bag meals. But by the end of the first month we were so over that and without Pizza Hut or McDonalds to fall back on I needed to come up with some fast easy recipes that didn’t taste fast and easy. Most of the time I would prowl the internet food sites and mash up a recipe or four to make something all my own, these were typically dishes that needed to be made a couple of times before I ended up with something that Erik liked. Erik, by the way, is an incredibly hard man to satisfy, hardly anything is as good as he thinks it could be; most of my recipes are still in their conception stage because of him.
The new recipe thing I’ve been doing way more than once a week but the wine I’ve been slacking on. I don’t take that to be a bad thing though. The first bottle I bought is a red wine from South Africa. I’m not typically a fan of red wines, especially dry ones because I hate the tingles I get in my nose from them. And this one is no exception, it’s an okay wine I guess, nothing to write about really. The label was pretty. Now the second one I tried, Red Truck, was good, I took out a whole bottle in under an hour. I like Red Truck.
I've been having bad luck in my choices of wines lately, there haven't been any worth talking about for the last two weeks but I'll keep trying, this week I'm going to try a wine called Daddy's girl, it makes me wonder whether they have a cute name because their wine is so good they don't need to be serious about it, or if it's so bad that they need a funny label for it. I'll find out soon enough I guess.
I’ve been having fun cooking my own food and coming up with my own ideas from other people’s recipes. I started a new recipe book, not completely because I wanted a new one but mostly because I lost my old one. I’m putting photos of all the finished products once we’ve gotten to a point that I won’t change the recipe again. I’m also writing pages of notes that I’m updating every time I re-make the dish. I’m writing my notes like I’m writing a letter to someone or writing a blog, one day Laine or someone else will get the recipe book when I die and it’ll be like I’m talking them through recipes from the grave. Oooh…
So now for the proof of it all; here are some photos of the food I’ve made in the last couple of months.
First here is a stuffed pizza I made with Italian sausage and mushrooms. Yes that is homemade pizza dough though I don’t think it tastes any better or worse than the “just add water” packets from Betty Crocker. However, cheap trumps puffed chests, so even if there is a pride factor involved I won’t be making my own dough too often.
The second meal that I remembered to take pictures of is my spaghetti sauce. It didn’t start out to be a spaghetti sauce but that’s how it ended up, next time we are going to drain a little of the juice from the tomatoes and add a tomato paste or some tomato sauce to make it, you know, more saucy. Colleen and Sydney were over when I was making this one and this was my second go at it. The first time I made sauce out of a beef stock and cooking sherry which I thought was amazing but Erik didn’t like it so I tried again and this is what we’ve got; my first true blue very own recipe that came from my own pretty little head. It looks good, huh?
I made Beef Stew on Friday, the 16th, when Stimpy came to visit. It had started off as a soup but things took their own roads and ended up in stew. The next night I made mini shepherds pies out of the leftovers that were way yummy.
I made Zuppa Toscana two days after my birthday dinner with my parents, my dad got this soup it encouraged me to try my own. It tasted a lot like the stuff they sell at Olive Garden and Erik liked it so there are major points for that dish.
I’ve decided to expand my fast food boycott for a little longer, I don’t’ know how much longer but I’m doing well with it so I don’t see why I’d stop. I might allow myself a little something every now and then but I’d like to see if I can make it to thanksgiving at least. That’ll be right at four months. Then we can try for Christmas.