Appetizers

Okay, so the first thing you learn about cooking when you start to cook is that nothing goes as planned. At least, that was the case for me. My original plans took a nose dive after discovering a few things. One, I don't have a double boiler. I hate to buy one if I don't know that I will use it. So I had to swap the idea of making queso for quacamole. Two, peeling eggs isn't as easy as you would think. My deviled eggs turned into egg salad. And three, no matter how much you follow a recipe, you may have to improvise. Let me know what you think! Side note: I also made egg salad, but didn't take any pictures or write down the recipe. I'm pretty new to this whole blogging thing, so writing every thing down and remembering to document is not easy for me. 

MY CREATIONS:

The first thing that I made was guacamole. My friend Sydney helped me with the ingredients and set up for this. When grocery shopping, Sydney helped me to pick out a ripe avocado. I had no idea what to look for, but she explained it to me. The avocado should be a little squishy, but not super squishy. If it's too hard, it will be too hard to mash.

Guacamole 4/5

Ingredients: 

4 avacados

4 tsp of lime juice

4 tblsp cilantro

a handful of red onion

1 jalepeno

salt to taste

First, we took the pit out of the avacados by cutting them in half and scooped the avocado out. We then mashed them with a fork. We squeezed the juice out of two limes, cut up some red onion, cut a jalepeno (making sure to take the seeds out), added cilantro, and mixed it all in with the mashed avocados. We then added salt, a little bit at a time, and mixed it in. We continually added salt until we liked the way the guacamole tasted.

TACO PIZZA 3.5/5

Next, I made taco pizza. I followed a recipe from LivingWellMom for this. On her website, she does a really great job walking you through the cooking process.

Ingredients

2 tubes refrigerated crescent rolls

1 package cream cheese, softened

1 cup sour cream

1 pound ground beef or ground turkey

1 envelope taco seasoning mix

1 medium tomato, chopped

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1 cup shredded lettuce

I'll let you go to LivingWellMom's website to get the rest of the recipe. I don't want to take credit for something I didn't create! I really thought it was an easy recipe to follow and was easy to make. I liked the flavor, but my brother-in-law said it would have been much better with taco sauce. My timing on taking it out wasn't great, so the crust was cold when I served it. 

Homemade Pizza 2.5/5

I originally was planning on doing more of flatbread pizza, and following the recipe from Carrie's Experimental Kitchen. However, things didn't go as planned, so I improvised. I used too small of a pan, so my "flatbread" turned into a thick crust pizza. I also didn't have a lot of the ingredients for the first recipe (mayonaise and garlic were main ingredients that I thought we had in the kitchen, only to find out we didn't have them). I found pizza sauce in the cupboard, so decided to make a more traditional pizza. 

       

I set the oven to 350 degrees and let it preheat. I spread the dough out into the pan. I added some olive oil to the dough. I then cooked it for 10 minutes. It didn't seem to be fully cooked at that point, so I put it back in for 5 more minutes. I then added the pizza sauce, cut up tomatoes, plenty of mozzarella cheese, and basil. I baked it for another 15 minutes. 

I didn't like how this one turned out. I don't think the dough cooked all the way in some spots. The flavor also wasn't all that great. I think adding pepperoni or black olives (some other type of flavor) could have helped. My brothers and mom also didn't really like this recipe. The term "bland" came up a lot when describing it. 

Black Bean and Corn Salsa 4/5

This was an improvised recipe. My friend Sydney (who also helped with the guacamole) helped with this one. I liked the flavor of it! I'm excited to share this with you all. 

Ingredients:

3 cans of black beans

2 cans of corn

Diced red onion (we used about a handful)

Cilantro (again, about a handful) 

1/2 a jalepeno

Lemon and Lime Juice (juice from a small lemon and a small lime)

Salt and Pepper to taste

We basically just cut everything up and mixed it together! Make sure to drain the juice from the black beans and corn.