First real entry and I'm already failing.

Weekend before last, I actually went wild cooking. Pot roast one night, baked pork chops with a white wine and cream of mushroom sauce, baked ziti rigatoni, and other stuff I've forgotten. But now, as previously discussed, I've forgotten what I did and didn't like about those recipes, so I'll have to come back to them again later. It was mostly tasty, though.

If I were to write a letter to my 15 year old self, I'd tell myself to start trying to cook and promise myself that I'd enjoy it more than I'd think. And that, for a woman who once neglected to take a frozen pizza off the cardboard before baking, I'm surprisingly good at it when I pay attention to what I'm doing. The trick is paying attention, because I have almost no attention span. Only the imminent threat of things boiling over or burning down the apartment keeps me on track (let's not talk about the time I wandered off and left the water running, filling the sink for dishes. The sink didn't overflow and that's all that matters).

Anyway, last weekend we were having BBQ chicken - simplified with the helpful suggestion of "why don't you just use bottled BBQ sauce?"  That's easy as shit - thaw chicken breasts, season with whatever you like on chicken (garlic powder, Mrs. Dash and maybe a little onion powder for us, since I try not to use salt if I can help it). Lightly spray a baking dish with cooking spray, cover with foil and bake chicken breasts 20 minutes at 350. Remove, drain any fat, cover liberally with sauce, and bake uncovered for another 15-20 minutes. This was highly simplified, considering that I was trying to make my own sauce too. Maybe another time... although sometimes it's not worth the trouble.

Some kind of potatoes were wanted, but not regular mashed potatoes, so we decided to try Cheesy Potato Bake instead. I should have read the comments, because they were right about it being runny. Of course, I made them the cheater's way - I used a bag of microwave mashed potatoes. Those always work better for me if I smash them up first, and I usually use my giant serving fork before I take after them with a hand mixer. Sure I could buy a potato masher, but I always forget. My grandmother swears that potatoes will do something weird if you beat them too long (get sticky, maybe? turn into wallpaper paste? cthulu-mogrify themselves?) but I've yet to manage to ruin a batch of them. Not for lack of beating, either.

That being said, I shouldn't have measured out 3 cups. Stick to the whole bag, and gradually add the cheddar cheese soup until it hits a consistency you like. This dish will NOT thicken as it bakes. The top gets browned slightly, yes, but underneath it will be as runny as a new tie-dyed shirt (ask me later about the time a Christmas gift turned me into a smurf). Letting it sit a few minutes in a bowl before eating helps some, but even then it's kind of like really thick mashed potato soup. It is, however, really really good. I'll admit that I didn't even cut up the green onions with a knife. I washed a bunch and then went after them with freshly-washed kitchen scissors because I didn't want to drag out a cutting board. Hey, I never claimed these were going to be any kind of pro cooking tips here, so feel free to skip over any potentially failure-from-the-Health-Board stuff I might unwittingly be doing. Neither of us have gotten food poisoning or brain worms from pork yet, so I figure we're okay.