Kitchen Failure and Success

I just love casseroles for many reasons. Not only do they define comfort food for me, but they are usually easy to prepare in advance and are great for hectic evenings (and the lazy ones). Fall and winter are perfect times to have a casserole. Now, I never make the ones that call for "cream of something" canned soup. The combinations of noodles, cheese and buttery crunchy toppings just make me salivate. I do tend to get into a rut, I have a rotation of just a handful that are my go-to recipes.

I was so excited to find a new cookbook called The Best Casserole Cookbook Ever. There are yummy photos and a huge assortment of casseroles that are outside of the norm, but easy to prepare without exotic ingredients. Those of you who have been in my kitchen know about my large number of cookbooks and the fact that I have more storage for cookbooks than for dishes. I even had to bring in a bookshelf to hold more of my growing collection. I read cookbooks like others read novels. This leads me to another point for those of you who know my cooking style....I am completely unable to follow a recipe or measure ingredients. I just get inspired and go off on my own tangent.

Now on to my failure in the kitchen. I tried my first recipe in the cookbook that struck my fancy...South African Spiced Biryani. This recipe looked like something I would find in an Indian cookbook, one of my favorite ethnic cuisines. I had everything on hand, so I threw it together and actually followed the recipe (this was my first mistake - I know better than to follow a recipe!)

I was so excited about dinner, the house smelled wonderful from the combination of spices, the cardamom especially. I was so excited to dig into this meal that I even skipped taking a picture of it just so I could eat faster. The whole family agreed unanimously and in unison that this meal SUCKED!!!!!!! It tasted terrible. A complete failure! I quickly made some shrimp quesadillas as a replacement meal, at least they were good.

I am not going to let this bad meal keep me from trying other recipes from this book. It is just a disappointment to see a meal that I was so looking forward to end up in the trash.

You may remember my recent post about the death of R2D2. I had not attempted bread since he went to bread maker heaven. It is now time to move on from my grief and attempt to make bread without a bread maker. I know it is possible. I tried a recipe from a friend for Whole Wheat Bread. The bread came together and the kneading process was not nearly as bad as I remember as a kid. I felt so productive making bread for the family. A simple pleasure I should do more often.

I should have taken pictures along the way, but all I did was the finished product. The house smelled delicious from the bread. The bread was perfect! Soft, moist and light. Perfect with a generous amount of fresh butter on top. I gave one loaf to a friend and the girls and I have done a successful job of polishing off the second. I see more bread baking in my future...I do own many cookbooks on the topic...now I just need to find them in my collection!