A Series of Unfortunate Events

At the beginning of last week, we were on the ball at my house.  Monday was grocery shopping day; so I picked out all the recipes and made a list to ensure I would get all the ingredients I needed.  It was then that my series of unfortunate events started.  As I arrived at the grocery store, I realized the list was still on my dining table at home.  However, all the correct ingredients still ended up in my shopping cart.  I was super excited as the meat I was planning to fix was on sale!!  Added bonus! 

Tuesday morning, immediately after breakfast, I opened the cookbook to see what I needed to do first.  I knew the meat would take some time to prepare.  That’s when I noticed the “marinate overnight” phrase.  Normally, this wouldn’t stop me from making the dish.  I’m not cooking for prizes or stars or critics.  But since I’m really trying to follow the recipes, I decided this recipe would have to wait and we would eat something else.  So I then found another recipe that looked super easy and was basically a one-dish meal.  I decided I would make biscuits to go with it as well as cookies.  My new menu looked like this:

Menu

Easy Pot Roast (p.107)

Freezer Biscuits (p.215)

Rosie’s Peanut Butter Cookies (p.308)

Naturally, I didn’t have everything I needed for the pot roast (mainly, the roast), so it was off to the store for the second day in a row.  We took this adventure after lunch, and on arriving back at the house, it was naptime.  Once the children were in bed, I started in on the pot roast preparation.  “Easy Pot Roast” is an accurate title, for it was very easy to prepare.  I turned the oven temperature to 325° and began to put everything in my pot. I don’t have a roasting pan, so I used my large stock pot that I normally use for roasts.  I placed two celery stalks on the bottom of the pan in place of a wire rack.  I completed the preparations and had it in the oven in under 15 minutes!  I then proceeded with my other work of laundry, bills, phone calls, etc.

Let me put in a side note concerning a couple things I really like about this recipe.  We are working towards eating as little processed food as possible.  We still have a long way to go, but little by little our diet is definitely changing.  More veggies & fruits, more whole foods, different kinds of oils.  Maybe I will post more about that one day, but I wanted you to have a little background.  I love that this recipe uses olive oil.  It is one of the two main oils I am using these days.  (Coconut oil being the other.  I do also use sesame oil at times.)  I also used red onions as they are full of quercetin (http://healwithfood.org/health-benefits/eating-red-onions.php) and good for fighting certain sicknesses.  This recipe also uses carrots and peppers, making it very colorful and full of beneficial things!  The low-sodium V8 juice is another good choice.  The other ingredient I love is the apple cider vinegar.  If you can find an apple cider vinegar with lots of “mother” in it, you are making some really good choices for your family. http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/the-benefits-of-apple-cider-vinegar/

But back to my unfortunate cooking day.  I remembered that I had forgotten to put the thyme in with the roast, so I planned to do that an hour or so before I pulled the roast out of the oven.  It seemed the yummy aroma was starting to fill the air.  (I wish there was a way to post scents along with pictures!  And speaking of pictures, I didn't get around to taking any this time.)  As I opened the oven to put the thyme in the pot, I realized that no blast of heat hit me.  Hmm.  No warmth was coming through the pot holder as I opened the lid; so I looked at the oven controls.  The temperature was set, but I had forgotten to turn on the oven!  I guess the fragrance from prepping the food had stayed in my nose.  By now it is almost 5:00!  Since my pot filled the entire height of the oven, there would be no biscuits.  Thankfully, my husband had a rehearsal and wouldn’t be home until 7 at the earliest, and of course, my children don’t care what they eat.  So I turned ON the oven, upping the temperature to 350° and adding more liquid to try to keep the roast from drying out as I tried to get it to cook a little more quickly. 

We did go ahead and make the cookie batter as I figured those could bake once the roast was done.  At 6:00, I took out some carrots and potatoes that had cooked and used those along with some leftovers for my children’s dinner.  My husband did arrive home at 7:00, hungry.   I decided to go ahead and check the roast to see if it was ready.  It was cooked and flavorful—not quite as tender as if it had it been cooked at a lower temperature for longer period of time, but it wasn’t something one had to chew too much!  We went ahead and ate it, and the taste was as wonderful as the aroma that filled the kitchen!

I then started putting cookies in the oven, the first pan according to the recipe.  Since my son had been asking to make chocolate chip cookies, I added chocolate chips to the next batch.  I sat back down at the table and got involved listening to how my husband’s day had gone, and before I knew it the cookies had been in 3 minutes too long!!  (And my oven overbakes anyway.)  So I quickly got up to take out the cookies.  The plain ones were on the top rack and did just fine.  The chocolate chip ones on the bottom—well, let’s just say that the bottoms of the cookies were the same color as the chocolate chips.  Thankfully, I had a little more batter so I did get about 8 nicely baked ones with chocolate chips in them. 

Maybe next time I forget to let something marinate we’ll just order pizza.