Kitchen Mission No. 1

So, this month's project over at www.shrinkingjeans.net is all about getting into the kitchen to try some tasty recipes. The Sisters in the 'Hood have been doing a fabulous job of posting fantastic looking recipes as part of its Taste of the Sisterhood series.

I am not the cook in my house. Growing up with three brothers, I was always playing outside in the mud and the muck and backyard sports games. I took little interest in the kitchen. My sole jobs were to set the table, clear the table and load the dish washer. I was lucky to marry a man who loves to cook, and who loves to cook healthy meals. Every now and then I try to give him a night "off". On those nights, our dinner nine times out of 10 comes from a crock pot.

So yesterday, with a fairly lazy Sunday ahead, I told him I'd be cooking a meal for the freezer, something we could enjoy down the line since had the meals already planned for the week pretty much. I chose the Crockpot Cheesy Chicken Spaghetti which can be found here: http://shrinkingjeans.net/2010/11/taste-of-the-sisterhood-crockpot-cheesy-chicken-spaghetti/

"I'm going in! Cover me!" I said to him, as if I was a federal agent entering into a drug den. I was just going into the kitchen, but to me the danger and intimidation level is just as high. I have very little confidence when it comes to my cooking skills and I was determined to let the Taste of the Sisterhood give me some "practice."

I gathered the ingredients.

We were missing some ingredients and so I made the executive decision to just go without. I used a box of linguini because that was the only pasta in the pantry. I used about 3 cups of frozen chicken I had in the freezer. We had no Velveeta. And I added a couple cloves of minced garlic because we are big garlic fans. The nice thing about all of this was when he came into the kitchen and showed me his spiffy way of dicing up an onion. We are rarely in the kitchen preparing a meal together so this alone made me glad I embarked on my mission.

At another point, he said from another room, 'It smells divine," but what I heard was "I smell the wine." Well, I knew I had no wine in the recipe and so this caused a degree of alarm for a moment or two.

Anyway, long post short -- it didn't come out the way I thought it would -- it was a bit dry even after I added extra water, but it tasted great! I froze it for us to use at a later date and when it's time to serve, I will add some spaghetti sauce.

Mission accomplished! And no major disasters : )