CHALLENGE: Cook it Up!

Here's Trish's big idea: (taken from Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity)

What: Pull those cookbooks off the shelves–you know, the ones with pages you can turn–and use them! You can outline how you’d like to proceed–one cookbook a month? Or three recipes a month from any cookbook? Or even check out new cookbooks from the library. You make the rules!
When: I will put up a linky on the first Saturday of the month (I meant for this post to publish last Saturday…). Write your post whenever you’d like (and if you’d like), but don’t forget to come link up.
Where/How: Presumably your blogs but no worries if you’d rather just post on twitter or instagram (Tag me! @TriniCapini). Or just come back here at the beginning of the month and comment. I think you’ll have better luck if you blog but I also don’t want anyone to stress.
Why: Because if you’re like me, you have a giant stack of cookbooks that are collecting dust. I’m bad about searching the internet for a specific recipe rather than looking at my own cookbooks. Let’s put our cookbooks to use!

This sounds like a grand idea, and corresponds well with my 'summer is when I try to do things since I don't have to correct and I got a good night's sleep'. I don't have any great plan, but we moved to a new house in April, and now have a lovely big kitchen, with a place for everything, and even still some empty cupboards in the kitchen, it's that big! I have many lovely cookbooks, so I am just going to try to open some up and make some things over the summer.

I even started today.

I decided I wanted to make fajitas for supper tonight and got out my Mexican Recipes book by Better Homes and Gardens. I keep the marinade recipe that I cut out of the newspaper in the front. While browsing, I decided to make guacamole for the first time. Blend that avacado up in my fake magic bullet! Cool. (I'm a new eater of avacado.)

Since this was early this morning I made these plans (early around here is 11 am - we enjoy our summer), I thought I'd try out the new griddle my husband bought last week and make my own tortillas. We bought the griddle because we have lots of storage space and it even took me a few minutes to even find where my husband put it away.

While most of my tortillas look more like Africa than a circle, I felt I was getting my rolling technique by the last one. They tasted fine, even though I mixed up by baking soda and powder so ended up putting both in. I'd definitely make both guacamole and the tortillas again.

So, two new recipes and I used two different appliances. Score.

The only thing missing from this lovely supper was a homemade margarita. Next time.




Here's a few pictures from my new kitchen. I can't seem to get a good picture of the sink in the corner because of the light from the windows. Another time.