My That's Pinteresting! : One Pot Wonders

Let's discuss the Italian Wonderpot, shall we? About a year ago, I stumbled across a pin for this recipe and it seemed ridiculously easy. Throw a bunch of crap into a pot at the same time and 20 minutes later, you'll be eating a full meal.

Being the busy full-time-working-mom of a 4 month old at the time, I thought - this must be the answer! Sure enough - it worked. And it wasn't half bad. And it made enough for us to enjoy for 2 days.

Let's back track a little. I'm not exactly the most domestic person you'll ever meet. To be completely honest, I just don't cook. Ever. I don't enjoy it. I also don't have time for it. Sure, I see all of the yummy meals people ~~who don't have children~~ make and photograph in my Instagram feed, but when I'm pushing that shopping cart through Publix on Sunday afternoon - wishing I was anywhere except the grocery store - I'm pretty unadventurous.

I've tried to use the crock pot in the past, but it really pisses me off when I have to do things such as "brown meat" or "caramelize onions" before adding them - I mean - ain't nobody got time for that! You know what I'm saying? I thought the purpose of the crock pot is that you can just dump everything in and let it sit for 8 hours while you enjoy the delicious smell of home-cooked food being prepared in your house while you sit on the couch and watch Property Brothers. I didn't know you had to actually COOK and (dare I say) dirty up your pots and pans that you will later have to (dare I say) clean!

Back to the Wonderpot. I've made it a few times - none of which ever duplicated the deliciousness of that very first time, but it is what it is - a warm meal that takes basically no time at all except cutting up some veggies.

Since then, I've been on a search for other such meals that require very little to absolutely no effort on my part. I came across this one and decided to give it a go! One Pot Zucchini Mushroom Pasta.

I did substitute a few items. For example, I used vegetable broth instead of water (because we're huge fans of flavor in our food) - I would even go so far as to say that next time, I'd even switch to chicken or beef broth. I also used a mix of portabella and cremini mushrooms because cremini mushrooms are about 5 times the price of portabella. I chose to substitute heavy cream with whole milk because - hello - #lesscalories. And I used canned sweet peas because my son loves them - and once you find something they love, you stick to it! Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Ever. If your kid likes canned peas, you never - I repeat, NEVER - switch to frozen or fresh. You run to the grocery store and you buy yourself 10 cans to keep on hand for emergencies!

Ingredients with substitutions

As you can see from my photos, my attempt pretty much looked absolutely nothing like the photos on Pinterest.

I did work up quite a sweat though - walking around the kitchen with a camera dangling from my neck while my husband gave me strange looks, and my little sous chef kept checking in on me as he tried to break down our barrier.

All in all - I'll say this one was a success. It was mediocre tasting at best - but it wasn't offensive, and it was something I would definitely make again - with a few tweaks to bring out more flavor. Even better - my son absolutely LOVED it! He pretty much loves anything with pasta, but we've discovered through this little experiment that he apparently loves mushrooms and zucchini as well. Double score!