Cooking Update

So here are my pictures of how the recipes turned out. Quite different from Ree's pictures...I obviously have no future in food photography, good thing I had no aspirations in that field or I would have been sorely crushed.

Ultimately, I was rather disappointed in how the food turned out. It is probably a bad idea to pick recipes on an empty stomach because I picked the 1st 3 that I looked at...maybe I should have been more selective and remembered how much I dislike cilantro and chicken drumsticks...hmmmm...ya think?

Here are the Cheesy Muffins...it can't get any easier! So simple to make and these are pretty good...this will be the only recipe out of the three that I will make again. I would recommend you try this if you looking for a good bread side to go with your main course.

This picture is what our dinner looked liked on Tuesday night. It was a good dinner, tasted good...but was not spectacular. I guess I get my expectations so high...I think I was hoping that I would somehow explode in ecstasy after making Pioneer Woman's recipes. Has this ever happened...no.(my Lindor Truffles have come close) So why would I think a drumstick could do this?...have no clue where my delusions were coming from. But this meal was all too ordinary and took too much planning for it to be worth it. In fact the vegetables were my favorite thing on the plate and I had nothing to do with them besides throwing them in the microwave...I LOVE Steam Fresh veggies!

I am not sure if I messed up somewhere...but you first coat the chicken in the yogurt mixture and then roll it in bread crumbs. Well...while the chicken was baking all of the coating melting to the bottom of the pan...so I had naked drumsticks and coated glass pan. Which by the way....if you love drumsticks you probably would like this recipe...I just have never been a huge fan...they just looked so good at the time.

And here is the Black Bean Chowder...the biggest mistake of the night. Again, I have no clue what I was expecting...but whatever it was did not happen. It looked good, smelled good...but tasted like hmmmm...black beans. Which is fine...but if I wanted to eat black beans I would have just opened a can up and had at it. I thought with all the preparations and spices and milk and cheese that went into this that it would be nothing short of amazing.
The only way I really liked eating this was if I crumbled the cheesy muffins in it. Okay...it wasn't horrible...it was good...it is something that would be really nice on a terribly freezing cold day in the middle of nowhere and you are lost. I also felt like my dad while I was eating it. It just reeked of Dad-ness. And the Cilantro-relish...okay that was the biggest mistake of the night. While cutting up the Cilantro I almost tossed my cookies...which should have been my first clue. Cilantro and I do not get along...and Cilantro is a power hungry herb...it takes over everything it gets its greedy little leaves on. So...once I topped the chowder with it, it was all over.

So lesson learned...if you feel no love for drumsticks and hate cilantro...DON'T MAKE IT! However, there are cilantro lovers out there and you would probably adore the relish...I just feel bad that 2 cucumbers had to go to waste when I dumped the whole relish out. Wasteful me and poor starving children in the world...I wish I knew where they were because I would have happily given over everything I made that night.

I have not given up on Pioneer Woman...I still want to be just like her. But I have realized why I don't cook.