I pride myself on being a good cook and trying new recipes. So when I make a totally bad dinner, I feel bad. Ick.
I wanted to use up the rest of the broccoli from the garden, so I decided on broccoli cheese soup. Nevermind the fact that I have ruined every single cheese soup I have ever made. DH got home as I was making it, so I made him add the cheese (he has done this before successfully). Apparently, my mere presence in the kitchen during the adding of the cheese is enough to make the cheese congeal and float to the top. If you have never eaten soup this way, it is quite an unappetizing texture (though the taste was not terrible). I also decided to make tilapia stuffed with crab. I don't think the fault was with the recipe itself - but in the substitions I made in trying to make the recipe South Beach compliant. Olive oil/Olivio for butter, canned crab for real crab (a substitution of convenience), low-carb bread crumbs for regular. The result was dry, crumbly stuffing with no crab taste at all. But wait, it gets worse. I pulled a box of breaded fish out of the freezer for the kids and cooked them...but they didn't look or smell quite right. I pulled the box out of the garbage - expired 1/05. Ewwww. A quick trip to the freezer produced a budget chicken nugget meal that, coupled with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, sufficed. The good part of dinner: I cut up cukes, broccoli, and green peppers for the kids to munch on since they were whiny before dinner was ready. They ate every bite!
I hate wasting food, and I hate even more that the reason I wasted food was that I was trying to save the food from going bad! (or maybe that's a good thing? Now I'm confusing myself). If I had just stuck to the tried and true recipes, everything would have been fine. But, I have come across some knockout recipes by veering from the tried and true...so a little experimentation is good.
(hear that, BA? Get out the da#* crockpot!)
A disastrous despicable dinner decision
November 16th, 2006 at 02:03 am
November 16th, 2006 at 03:14 am 1163646889
I have been using recipezaar a lot lately. I love recipes with lots of comments so I can make sure I'm making tried and true stuff. I've made some neat dishes thanks to that that I would have never otherwise made. That way I am making someone else's tried and true treasure!
November 16th, 2006 at 03:20 am 1163647200
maybe try melting shredded cheese + milk + a little butter/oil of choice in the microwave. might make it easier to add to the soup.
regarding the actual soup: have you tried making up a batch of the 'cream of whatever' dry mix? recipes for this abound, and i was thinking that hydrated per directions plus the above mentioned melty cheese mix might just do the trick for cheese soup...
and you're right: BA should break out the #$@# crockpot!
November 16th, 2006 at 02:28 pm 1163687281
I am not too familiar with cheese soups; how exactly do you get the right consistency? Blender (as yummy64 suggested) or do you add more cream or milk? We don't have these sorts of soups in Chinese cooking though they do sound yummy.
November 16th, 2006 at 05:19 pm 1163697555