My 2 year adventure, week 74: Spicy Honey-Brushed Chicken Thighs with Quinoa Salad with Peaches/Black Forest Cherry Cake

Week 74:
  I really need to make this blogging thing more consistent. I've been at cooking camp for this last week. Cooking camp ended yesterday so I am back to cook on my own. I made these chicken thighs and they were amazing. I had to take the skin off and the bone out because the boneless ones came in packs of 6 and the bone in ones came in packs of 4. I needed 8, so I got the thighs with the bone in. The spice mix was really good. Garlic powder, chili powder, salt, cumin, paprika, and pepper.I brushed honey and vinegar during the cooking process.They kind of reminded me of the chicken wings. It was not as spicy as I though it was gonna be but it was delicious. The quinoa salad was nice, but I preferred the chicken.
   The cake was really nice. The filling was whipped cream and a cherry filling. The filling wasn't too sweet, that cake was chocolatey, and the overall cake was amazing. Both dishes got 9.6/10. I think I'll make both dishes again.


 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)

My 2 Year Adventure, week 59: Chicken and guacamole tacos

Week 59:
  Today I made chicken tacos. They were supposed to be tostadas but my local grocery store doesn't sell tostada shells. Instead of using tostada shells (fried, flat, corn tortillas) I just used regular corn tortillas and made them into tacos. 
  Once again, my "talent" returns to wreak havoc. The avocado I picked for my guacamole was super green. Mashing it was supposed to be easy but I could only get the fruit to a decent consistency with a mix of stabbing, mashing, and all sorts of other violent actions. I feel like that could be a new form of anger management, just take your anger out on an avacoado. 
  Despite my awful produce selections, the guacamole was decent. My favorite element was the salsa but although I added a tablespoon of jalapeno pepper, I still didn't quite get a kick.
  The chicken was just oven roasted then shredded and tossed with some lime juice and paprika. I think I over cooked it a little, maybe 2 minutes overdone so it was a little dry. 

  Overall my family gave it a 7.75/10 and that's a pretty 

decent score. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)

My 2 year adventure, week 46: Greek inspired chicken and barley salad REPEAT

Week 46:
  So according to the recipe calendar, I should've made Golden peach soup with shrimp and crab seviche. There were a couple issues. #1: Peaches aren't really in season #2: Where I live, seafood is kind of expensive so buying a bunch of shrimp and crab would be overboard. So as much as I would've loved to try my hand at a seviche, I didn't get the chance. 
  Instead, I made one of my family favorites, the barley salad from week 5. Yeah, that's really simple and really good so I just repeated that. Yup....

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)  

My 2 year adventure, week 45: Walnut and rosemary oven-fried chicken/ Banana split ice-cream sandwiches

Week 45:
  WOW!I haven't blogged in ages. I can't believe how much I let that slide. But now summer vacation has begun and I will be cooking and blogging a whole lot more. 
  Yesterday was father's day, so I wanted to make something really comforting and tasty. So I made roasted chicken breasts. The recipe asked for cutlets which pretty much mean that the chicken breasts have been tenderized. Now, the butchers at my local grocery store were nice enough to use the machine to do it for me. However, everything was falling apart and the breasts were very variant in size. Because some were so big, I ran out of the crust and so, some had more of a drizzle of walnut and rosemary. Either way it ended up being good and my family gave it a 7.5/10. 
  Now for the ice cream sandwiches. I was really worried because there were only four ingredients in the cookies. Powdered sugar, flour, vanilla, and an egg. I didn't even have vanilla so I used almond extract instead. The cookies ended up being these really thin crunchy wafer-like things which were really good. In the middle I put vanilla ice cream but I added mashed bananas and crushed peanuts and it gave the ice cream more flavor and texture. I rolled the sandwiches in some peanuts and topped them off with a cherry, whipped cream, and chocolate syrup. They were really and my family gave them an 8.5/10. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)   

My 2 year adventure, week 40: Grilled chicken with mint and oine nut gremolata with a sugar snap pea and feta salad/ Carrot ginger refresher

Week 40:
  I haven't been cooking. No, I'm not having a block like what Julie experiences in Julie and Julia where she eats yogurt for dinner and falls behind... I just went through mid-years. This is my first year in high school so this year I had mid-year exams. Right after mid-years it was my birthday (I'm 14), so I haven't cooked in a while. I was so excited to get back to cooking! The first dish had 3 components: the chicken, which I just grilled, then finished it off in the oven, the gremolata, and the salad. To make the gremolata I had to chop mint, pine nuts, and garlic really fine, since I don't have a mini chopper. I ended up getting a really good consistency and I was really happy with the end result. For the salad in blanched red onion and sugar snap peas, in addition to making a dressing and crumbling some feta into the mix. It was a really simple dish with minimal prep, I'll probably make it again. 
  The refresher was soooooooooo good. It was like a smoothie, but not quite. I put carrot juice, yogurt, applesauce, frozen bananas, ginger, and ice into a blender and I began to pulse and the blender was too full... It didn't explode or anything cool like that, but we had to pour some out and re-blend it. In the end, both dishes got 9/10 and I am definitely making the refresher again in the near future.  

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :) 

My 2 year adventure, week 38: Crab cakes with spicy remoulade/ Chicken and okra stew

Week 38:
Finallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! A new entry! I haven't blogged on here since September 2 2013. It's been 4 months! But, I have been cooking and that brings us to week 38. So my dad and I decided to cook together today. Normally I cook alone but we thought, hey, it would be fun to bond over a common interest. We started off with the crab cakes. The crab cakes were super easy to make other than actually cooking them. You just mix a bunch of stuff together, make some patties, and fry. Frying is difficult though because the cakes have a tendency to fall apart... We were successful and we made 7 beautiful cakes. They were sooooooo good but no where even near the remoulade sauce. O...M...G! I don't like mayo at all but somehow with lemon, capers, cayenne, and some other ingredients, the mayo sauce was AMAZING!
For the stew, it was really time consuming. There was a lot of prep and the stew took about an hour to cook but it was so worth it! The flavor was so good and the chicken and okra were cooked perfectly. These were actually some of my favorite dishes so far and my family gave both of them 9/10. But as a wrap-up, I'm back and expect many more entries!

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)
 

My 2 year adventure, week 20: blue cheese stuffed chicken with buffalo sauce/ brown soda bread

Week 20:
I can't believe I've been doing this for 20 weeks! So the first recipe was the chicken. My dad was really the one that stuffed the chicken with the blue cheese. Then we dredged it in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs. The chicken was pretty easy. Then for the buffalo sauce you just need to mix a couple ingredients. The dish itself was really simple but yummy. my family gave it an 8.5.

The brown soda bread was interesting. I had to buy a giant bottle of wheat germ because I only needed a tablespoon... The bread came out okay but there were green bits in it. Everyone was pretty confused. Also, I didn't have a loaf pan so I went to the store and got a brand new loaf pan!!!!!! Any way, my family gave it an 8. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)  

My 2 year adventure, week 17: Roast chicken with balsamic bell peppers and mascarpone mashed potatoes

Week 17:
So this collection of recipes has many opportunities to learn new things and I learned how to roast chicken breasts. It was one of those simple yet delicious dishes. The spice rub was really strong in flavor and I liked it a lot. My brother on the other hand barley even touched his chicken and only ate the peppers and potatoes. That gave me the chance to steal off his plate a bit...The pepper were a very kid-friendly side dish which was nice considering my brother is definitely a kid. The potatoes would have been good if I had mashed them some more. The chunks of potato were kind of big and slightly unpleasant. But overall I really liked the dish but I don't get to vote and it got and 8.3333 if I remember correctly. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :) 

My 2 year adventure, Week 12: Egg, sausage, cheese, and jalapeno breakfast braid/ Fresh mediterranean salad

Week 12:
Okay. Week 12 was two weeks ago and I'm writing about it now... behind, much? So I made two recipes, a salad and a breakfast braid. The salad was Mediterranean inspired but I'm not sure how. There's fennel, tomatoes, olives, red onions, beans and other yummy stuff. If you guys know how this could be Mediterranean inspired, please tell me because I am very confused. The salad was okay, my family liked it but I wasn't really a fan. I think that they gave it 7/10. The braid was so good!!!!! It had sausage, scrambled eggs, cheese, and jalapenos in it. My the recipe called for pizza dough in a can so I went and got some dough and I got it out of the can and I didn't notice that it was rolled up so I decided to roll it out and it just kept springing back... I went back to the store to get more and I was riding my scooter home and I hit a curb and I splatted on the sidewalk. Sadly, when the pizza can hit the ground it burst open... luckly, I was still able to use it. The braid was much better than the salad in my opinion and I think it got 8.5/10.   

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)

My 2 year adventure, week 7: Quick and easy chicken soup

Week 7:
First of all, I'd like to apologize for not posting my 2 year adventures. I went away for spring break so I couldn't really be doing my blog without my recipes. I made chicken noodle soup today. My mom came home from work today and she said "would you like pizza?" I said "no. I'm making soup." she said "great! how long have you had the stock on for?" I was really confused. I was like, "what stock?" My mom was pretty surprised that I didn't know what she was talking about. I said "I'm just using chicken broth..." My mom exclaimed "What's the point!" Apparently, my mom thinks that the whole point of making soup is making the stock from scratch. I didn't have time for that. I had a bit of a disaster. I got this food chopper for my birthday and I decided to test it out. I put carrot under the blades and started pushing down on the button to chop the carrot. Firstly, the pieces were uneven and secondly, they were so small. Thank goodness I had another carrot in the fridge. The chopper would be great for jalapeno peppers or something that you need to mince, but for soup? not really. In one of my previous entries I mentioned that my goal is to use a new ingredient or learn a new technique each time. Today I learned how to roast chicken. Yummmmmm! The soup was really good and my parents gave it a 7.5. I totally forgot about a picture though. Dang it!

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)

My 2 year adventure, week 5: Chocolate cappuccino/Greek inpired chicken and barley salad

Week 5:
Today was my first drink. This morning my dad and I made my mom a chocolate cappuccino. Yummmm...? I personally am not a fan of coffee and my dad only drinks decaf so only my mom tried it. I learned how to use our coffee machine and I learned how to scald milk. The end product looked pretty good with a nice dust of cinnamon on top. My mom gave the drink a 8/10. 

Once again, I was all alone... My parents went to look for some houses while I made dinner. The came home in time for my dad to help me with frying the chicken. The "Greek inspired" pretty much means there are kalamata olives and feta cheese in the salad. I think that this dish was probably the best one yet because my family gave it the highest rating yet. Personally, I love barley and I would have LOVED the dish, except that when I was making the dressing, I added in my garlic then stirred my sauce and realized... the "minced" garlic was HUGE! I couldn't really take it out of the dressing so i was trying to crush the garlic in the bowl with a fork... but I was pretty proud of my dressing because it had thyme in it. Now this might not seem like a big deal but for those of you who don't know what thyme is, here it is:

Now, if you are using this herb, you can't use the stems. All you can use are those tiny  leaves. This was a problem because I needed a full teaspoon of the leaves and theses leaves are the size of a grain of rice... and you have to pick them off the stems... ANYWAY, it took forever to get that part done. So remember how I mentioned that this dish had the highest ranking so far... Well, my family gave the dish a 9/10 (I really hope that that's the highest score so far so that I don't look stupid). Overall, Greek inspired chicken and barley salad, pretty good experience. 

See you next time internet! Love, Alexa :)