Cooking - H

So, my baby has refined taste buds. She knows a good piece of meat and will eat it without hesitation. Of course I've been battling her every now and then to see if she'll eat meat, and it's been hit or miss, so I thought that she didn't like meat. She will, however, eat a good piece of meat. I realized I lack respect for her discerning palate and have many a time tried to pass a make shift meat dish past her, which meant something like a pan-fried, salted piece of meat, maybe with some herbs thrown in. Just thinking about it is unappetizing. I don't know why I do that to J.

So, E and I made a new dish last night, coq au vin (chicken in red wine) and had it for dinner after J went down for the night. The dish is pretty tasty and the meat comes out very tender. I packed it with some rice for a picnic lunch by the local, very artificially blue pond so that J and I could watch the ducks and eat lunch together before she took a nap. Since I haven't had much luck getting her to eat meat, I also packed a back up of a PB sandwich and banana. When I told her she was having chicken and rice, she refused. She ate the carrots and mushrooms and some rice, but avoided the chicken. Somehow, I got her to eat one piece of it, and she proclaimed, "-licious!" and she ate the rest of the chicken leg. It's not a battle when it's good. I guess I just haven't given her anything good. Sorry, J.

I'm kicking up my cooking though. It's fun, but it's definitely a bit more stressful than it used to be. I have to plan everything ahead. There are no more jaunts to the bookstore to look for a good recipe to cook or bake that evening. The shopping and everything else involved with cooking a meal is too much to do all in a day while toting J around.

I think I found my cinnamon roll recipe. I tried one, and I'm usually able to pick out good recipes, but I failed. On my second try though, I found a good one by A. Brown, which is rather involved but good. I'm on my second try of the recipe. We'll see by tomorrow how they turn out. It's takes more than a day from start to finish. I realize that off the bat I had a bit more respect for this recipe b/c I knew that it was from A. Brown, not necessarily b/c I like his recipes. I've never actually tried any of them, but b/c he knows the science of the recipe and probably combined the ingredients and crafted the recipe with that in mind. So, anyway, I think I found a keeper. This will be probably be my cinnamon roll recipe. I'll probably make coq au vin some other time too.