August Cooks Week 8

Pizza Pot Pie is not for the faint of heart. There is a lot of meat and a lot of cheese. Even Jim, who has been known to put away some food, said, “Are you going to use all of that?”

I made very few changes to this recipe. I used 3 lbs of sweet Italian sausage and 1 lb. of hot sausage and I substituted dried herbs instead of fresh. Other than that, I followed it as written.

After a bit of trial and error, I discovered that kitchen shears are the perfect thing for cutting sausage. I browned it in batches, because my skillet is not big enough to hold it all at once.

I always get my pizza dough at Trader Joe’s. They have a plain white, whole wheat and garlic & herb dough and best of all, it’s only 99 cents!

My top shrunk up when it baked, but it didn't overflow. I waited until the very end of the week to make this recipe, but it was worth the wait.

Week Five - Artichoke and Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken

I love artichokes, in all their varieties. I like artichoke dip, fried artichokes, artichokes in my salad, marinated ones right from the jar. I even cooked my very own whole artichoke for the first time this year, so I did a little happy dance when I saw this recipe, even though I am totally incompetent at rolling things up in chicken and getting it to stay there.

Nevertheless, I made these last night and they turned out great, even if the stuffing leaked out the ends. My only caveat is that I would not want to make them on a week night again. We don't eat dinner until almost 10:00 p.m. because of J's work schedule, so this was just too much work for that late at night. However, my husband told me they were fantastic about four times during dinner and he ate two of them, so this one goes in the recipe box for sure.

August Cooks Week 4

I will confess, this dinner absolutely terrified me and I have no one to blame but myself, because I am the one who posted it. I had grilled cheese and soup in the wings, just in case it was a culinary failure.

It started off great. I got a fantastic deal on the fish at B.J.’s warehouse. I got them for $4.49/pound when the grocery store had them on sale for $6.99/pound.

The stuffing came together beautifully and smelled delicious.

Then, I got ready to stuff them. And I got scared. They didn’t “open flat like a book” which flustered me. Then I tried to cut the tails off and they didn’t want to go and that made me more flustered. And they have bones. And I forgot the lemon juice. I eventually got them stuffed and into the oven.

Poke, poke. Is it done yet?

They actually came out pretty good, but I won’t be doing whole fish again for a very long time.