Saturday, April 14, 2012

On the menu tonight...

I've joked before that I'm going to make a good wife for some woman some day. It's a slightly sexist joke regarding the gender expectations that society has of the wife being the cook and such, and the sexism part is why I don't make the joke anymore -- although I still hear it when I tell some of my friends about how much I love cooking, or if a recipe turns out great and it's simple enough to feel like sharing with my less skilled-at-cooking friends.

Lately, I haven't been cooking much aside from the quick-and-easy stuff like pre-made sausage patties on toast (part of my breakfast routine lately), but today has much more appetizing plans -- slow cooker chicken parmesan, pasta, and two loaves of bread; one is banana bread, and the other is strawberry-banana bread.



The original plan was just to make the strawberry banana bread, but my mother is allergic to strawberries. I decided to make a second loaf, of regular banana bread, so that she would be able to sample my potential brick(s) of failure along with me.

I say "potential brick(s) of failure" because I do NOT bake. I cook very well, but most of the time when I bake, it turns out as either a brick or tar. So far, that's only been with things from a box, so I'm hoping that taking great care with the recipes that I've got for the strawberry banana bread and the regular banana bread gives me more luck.

The slow cooker chicken parmesan is something wonderful, though. I don't remember how I found Emily's blog of Weight Watchers friendly recipes (www.emilybites.com), but I love that I did. Almost everything there sounds delicious, and in moderation, will help me lose weight without sacrificing food quality. I don't actually do Weight Watchers, because even just the online version requires a good chunk of money that I can't afford to bother with, but I know enough to use it to monitor my daily intake.

So, if everything turns out well tonight, I'll have a "Justin-flavored" post soon for the bread. I haven't really made any changes to the chicken, so I'm not going to bother with repeating Emily's recipe until I change it up. If I do. I mean, it's hard to mess with perfection and still have hope for something good.

Oh, and one other thing: check out this blog! It's just started today by a Twitter friend, and from the sounds of things, I'll be joining on as an ebook reviewer very soon -- it says so in the welcome post, and I look forward to writing with Kerri on it! See you all tomorrow!

UPDATE: After noticing the time, it looks like I'll be making the chicken tomorrow instead of tonight. It takes five or six hours to cook, and I hadn't realized how late it already was today. Instead, I'll be going with Sun Chip Chicken tonight, I think -- now THERE is a Justin-flavored post that I should put up soon. Probably tomorrow!

2 comments:

Jessica said...

I never thought of putting strawberries in banana bread. And leaving the bananas in slices seems much easier than mashing them all up. Sun Chip Chicken sounds like it might be like a thing I used to make with chicken breaded in snack cracker crumbs. I'll have to go check it out.

Justin Barlow said...

Well, there are some mashed bananas in the Twenties Hacker recipe, too. Only about 1/4 cup, though, which I think I might add on to for a stronger banana flavor.

Post a Comment