I'm Gourmet

Not really, but for some reason I really wanted to cook last night (this is highly unusual). I was trying to be thrifty and make versions of recipes with whatever I had on hand, but in the end I did have to make a grocery store run.


Here's my spread:






I had Poppyseed Chicken (from Kelly's Korner Recipes), the Pioneer Woman's mac & cheese, and baked carrots. YUM! Quite a blogger-y dinner, right? Poppyseed chicken is a super easy casserole, which is right up my alley - and I did it because I already had 2 cooked chicken breasts on hand. You add cream of chicken soup, sour cream, poppyseeds, and top it with crumbled Ritz crackers and butter. (I didn't say it was healthy!) The mac & cheese is what sparked this whole thing - I was craving it, and not the from-the-box kind. This recipe is different...you start with a roux (butter and flour) and mix in other things to make the cheese sauce. I felt very gourmet doing this! I also added ground mustard and paprika, which is a good but interesting taste. Don't be expecting it to taste like Luby's because it won't, but it was good. Jeremy even liked it, and he's picky and not afraid to tell me! The baked carrots are my fave side dish, along with sauteed spinach, because you barely do anything. I put mine in my baking dish with butter, nutmeg and cinnamon and off they go to bake for an hour while I cooked the rest of the stuff. I'm about to go reheat some of the mac...the pictures are making me hungry...

Since we're on the subject of being a crafty cook, I also decided to finally start (and finish) a fake flower arrangement I had been wanting to try. I got all these flowers on sale from Michael's quite a while ago, finally found something I wanted to display them in, and just went for it over the weekend. It's not perfect, but I also didn't pay $300 for it like some people do for the gorgeous ones I have seen at the Nutcracker Market!