Being Suzy Homemaker

I made a valiant effort this weekend to play Suzy Homemaker. After my big cleaning spree on Friday, I decided I was actually going to cook this weekend! (Gasp!!) My friend Ashlee has an amazing cooking blog (check out A Year in the Kitchen in the "Links I Like" section to the left), so I chose a few of her recipes that I wanted to try out. After writing down the ingredients I'd need, I headed out to the grocery store, leaving Shawn at home trying to salvage my computer (after it had been infected with over 120 "malicious" programs!).

I decided to play it safe for dinner Saturday night and make my mom's meatloaf and baked potatoes. I know that everyone says that their mom's meatloaf is the best...but mine truly is!! It doesn't have any kind of ketchup/sauce stuff on top of it, which I think is a huge bonus. Plus, I have fun mixing all the ingredients with my hands. :) For once, I remembered to account for living at high altitude (about 7200 feet), and the meatloaf turned out wonderful. I'm excited to eat the leftovers!

One of my friend's recipes that I wanted to try specifically called for Yukon Gold potatoes. So I just got a big bag of them and decided to use a couple of them for the baked potatoes to go with the meatloaf. Note to self: Yukon Gold potatoes do NOT work well for baking! They never got soft and fluffy, so Shawn and I practically had to cut our potatoes to eat them. Oh well...at least we were able to enjoy the meatloaf...and the store-bought cupcakes I had brought home.

This afternoon, Shawn decided to head out to the open space park nearby and go for a run. Since he left me at home, I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out another recipe or two! I first looked at making the "Molten Lava Cake." However, I discovered that I didn't buy enough of the baking chocolate to make the cake. As I'm typing this, it just occurred to me that I probably could've halved the recipe and been just fine. Dang it! Then I checked out the "Almost Fudge Gateau", which looks really yummy. Unfortunately, I again didn't have enough chocolate. I also don't own a spring form pan (at least, I don't think I do...). Or parchment paper. Or heavy cream. I then decided to give up on Ashlee's recipes and just make my mom's chocolate chip cookies. But I don't have chocolate chips. Or brown sugar that isn't rock hard.

Deciding that maybe I just wasn't supposed to bake goodies today, I decided to go back to Ashlee's blog and make Au Gratin Potatoes. That way, I can serve them as a side dish to the leftover meatloaf tonight. I know for a fact that I cut up too many potatoes. And I don't know if I was supposed to cover the casserole dish or not (I didnt'). But as far as I can tell, everything else looked right. It's currently in the oven and still has awhile to go, but I just checked on it and the potatoes definitely don't look like the pictures in Ashlee's blog.










***Half an hour later...these are pictures of the "finished" product.

Maybe Shawn and I will get Wendy's when I take him to the airport tonight so he can fly back to Seattle.