Cook dinner for my family once a week for six months

Got a little off track with this one. I made a simple breaded-chicken-and-salad type meal for week six, used my bonus pancake dinner for week seven, and then totally forgot to do this.

I still have 17 weeks left to do.

Cooked beef stew with potatoes and carrots. Assembled it on the 6ths, slow-cookered all day on the 7th and ate it that evening. I’d probably dice things a bit finer and add some celery next time, and maybe some red wine for flavour. I’m not a huge fan of alchohal, in or out of the cookpot, but it does add flavour.

Five weeks down, nineteen to go.

Next cooking on: Tuesday the 12th or Friday the 15th.
Will be cooking: Either home-made lasagna or sushi, depending on my mood and what I find tomorrow at the downtown Asian Supermarket. :)

Cooked buttermilk pancakes with blueberry sauce for Shrove Tuesday. Not a resounding sucess – the sauce was too sweet and, in a delightfully boneheaded move, I failed to add eggs to the pancakes. They ended up very dense and very… odd, to say the least. I may trying again this weekend – I have lots of buttermilk and blueberry sauce left, so why not?

Made the same ginger glazed chicken as last time – as per request of a friend who’d come over – with a few variations, includeing thickening the sauce with cornstarch after cooking, and diceing the chicken and adding red peppers before serveing. It went over better then last time, although my little sister fastidiously picked out all the red peppers, then scrapped the sauce off every bite of chicken before drowing it in Diana Sauce – I don’t think she got so much as a taste of it.

If I was like this as a child, I’m surprised my parents didn’t strangle me and hide the body.

Next cooking on: Wednesday the 6th.
Will be cooking: A crock-pot beef stew.

It’s a good thing I did cook that extra meal, because between exams and my friend’s birthday party I didn’t end up with the time to make a meal. Thankfully, my last exam is on Monday, so I should have plenty of time to do it this week.

Cooked ginger-glazed chicken last night, because I needed to do something to use up the ginger glaze I made for a desert. Call it a ‘bonus’ dinner – it can count for a week if I have to miss one later on.

Cooked a beef roast flavoured using garlic and rosmery, roasted with carrots, ‘fingerling’ potatoes, beets, and onion, all four flavoured with olive oil and rosmary.

The beets were not a resounding success – Mum, the only one in the family with any real enthusiasm for beets, says they should be boiled before roasting, or roasted much longer. I may or may not try them again. Also, the roast was more ‘medium-well done’ then ‘medium rare’, which the parents say is because our cookbook (a big old Betty Crocker one) is from my Grandmother’s era, where they liked to cook things into submissions and beyond. It still tasted fine, as did everything else but the beets, so I’ll chalk it up to learning and call this a sucess.

For my father I cooked perch in olive oil, basil and lemon juice. I feel bad for him, on this ridiculous diet-thing.

Two weeks down, twenty-two to go.

Next cooking on: Tuesday the 22nd.
Will be cooking: Something in the crock pot, so I can do the work the night before and have it ready, tastey and smelling delicious when I get home. Maybe a stew, or a nice rich chilli.

Cooked ginger-peach chicken with onions and red peppers. Served with basmati rice and a simple lettuce salad.

One week down, twenty three to go.

Next cooking on: Friday the 18th.
Will be cooking: a roast of some sort, with beets, potatos and carrots roasted as the veggies.

Okay. Wow, it’s been a while since I cooked. Well, I’m signed up to do the meal tomorrow night – I have my recipes picked out and everything. I just need to modify the one a bit for my Dad’s silly new diet-thing… it’ll be a fun challenge. :)

I was making progress on this entry, then getting sick derailed my make-dinner-weekly plan, and lo and behold I got off track. Blargh. I’ll go home tonight and offer to be tomorrow’s cook.