I consider the onset of school/fall to be like "New Year's Eve Light..." the time of year when I get my booty back inside of the house in the evening and cook balanced meals for my family instead of well, just winging it every night. My recent viewing of Julie and Julia further inspired me to pull out the old cookbooks... and, well, cook. YUM.
I just love to cook. I'm not really a recipe creator, but I will experiment with flavors/ textures/ ingredients that I suspect will work together... for the record, hot dogs sliced thinly are NOT a fitting substitution for pepperoni... anyway, I digress.
Last spring, I purchased a cookbook called Glorious One Pot Meals. (I like to say it like this: GLORIOUS one pot meals... you have to si-i-i-ng it, a la Julia...) Because it required use of an enameled cast iron Dutch oven which I didn't have, I didn't dive in to the recipes right away. But as my personal mini new year presented itself, I figured it was time to get started. So I went to the store to get the specified cast iron Dutch oven. Based on the size of meals I intended to prepare, I purchased the 3.5 quart version.
I've never been much for expensive jewelry, and I must admit that I've never seen the likes of a little blue box from Tiffany's. However, I admit that I'd much rather see an orange box like this one come into my house any day. Honey, I hope you're reading!
The premise of this cookbook is that you use fresh, healthy ingredients layered into a Dutch oven in a specific order, and then place the whole concoction in a hot oven (450 degrees) for around 45 minutes, and you've got a meal. It's like the anti-slow cooker... for those days when you just can't get your evening meal together in the wee small hours of the morning. The cooking time of 45 minutes is a rough estimate... the author, Elizabeth Yarnell, suggests that the meal is fully cooked a few minutes after the aroma of a fully cooked and savory meal wafts out of the oven.
She is right.
For my first try, I chose Savory Port-Mushroom Chicken. Following the directions almost completely to a T, the meal was simple to prepare and really did taste GLORIOUS.
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2 comments:
Your timing is perfect. Hubs and I were just discussing making healthy meals and cutting down on eating out. But, time always seems to be the culprit in keeping us from cooking at home in the weeks. Great suggestion..and great gift idea with Christmas approaching. Now, I just need Hubs to understand what I mean when I talk about getting a dutch oven. Let's just say he wasn't on the same page.
Ha! I don't think I would've known what one was myself, except that I got one as a wedding gift. My old one is probably my MOST used pot, other than the frying pan. I look forward to breaking the new one in in style... however I might actually need the larger size pot, you know, for like, boiling noodles or something. (= See you Friday!
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