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! 

My son's dish - obviously, I don't cut up food for myself or my husband.

Result:  Pinterest Success - even if it doesn't look nearly as appetizing as the original.   

A Seussical Experiment

My son's first birthday came and went back in June.  Given his obsession with all things Dr. Seuss, I we decided it would be the theme of his party.  It's bold, it's iconic, and let's be honest - there are a million ideas all over Pinterest.

One of the things I had my heart set on making were these Thing 1 & 2 cupcakes that I've pinned multiple times.  They looked simple enough..... get a box of Funfetti, throw some icing on them, and stick some blue cotton candy on top.  Then you put them in red cupcake liners with little Thing 1 and Thing 2 signs on them.  What could go wrong?

 

In all honesty, I'm not sure where it all fell apart - it was really just a hot mess from all angles.  Let's just say that I'm lucky I did a "trial run" a week before the actual party. 

To start off, I made the huge mistake of purchasing teal icing.  Clearly, a total lapse in judgement, but I figured it didn't matter because the cotton candy was really the star of the show anyway.  Speaking of cotton candy - I couldn't find any blue cotton candy.  All I could find was a plastic container of blue and pink cotton candy mixed together, which I later had to painstakingly separate (and naturally, I consumed all the pink stuff). 

The result?  Shameful.  I'm almost too embarrassed to even post a picture.  And yes I do realize that some of these cupcake liners are blue - I didn't want to waste too many red ones for my experiment!

The teal icing was horrendous, and the cotton candy started melting the second it hit it.  Within minutes, there was nothing left but sticky blue sugar - and this was in the confines of my air conditioned house.  There is no way these would last 30 seconds at an outdoor birthday party in South Florida during the month of June.

So what's a girl to do?  Come up with Plan B!  Forget the cotton candy and the disgusting teal icing.  I ended up bribing my sister-in-law (who actually cooks and bakes for fun) to whip up some yummy thick icing that I could coat with blue sprinkles.  As a bonus, she even came early and iced the cupcakes at the park and added the sprinkles for me. 

A reasonable person would assume I would have documented the final product....but that's where you'd be wrong.  The best image I can find showing the end result is this one:

At the end of the day, I was happy, and my son was happy - because he's 1 year old and doesn't know the difference anyway.  But let's be honest - my sister-in-law could have been a little less stingy with the blue sprinkles - just sayin!

Result:  Pinterest FAIL.

My That's Pinteresting!

Did you ever think that you invented something incredibly clever only to find out that it's apparently been in use for years and you're late to the game?  I could swear that I came up with the term "pinteresting" only to learn as I was trying to register a blog name, that clearly I am not the only genius out there. 

Pinning is my crack.  Seriously.  At the time of this particular publication, I have 4,910 pins (that number may go up within the next hour - just sayin').  Most of my pins are home decor for the mansion I will never be able to afford, fashionable clothes that will never look like that on my non-existent-thigh-gap-frame, recipes I will never make (glazed lemon zucchini bread - that doesn't even sound like a good idea), exercises I will absolutely never attempt, and random pins that link to websites that don't exist (always the good ones too - ugh!)

This is my attempt to chronicle my "pinteresting" adventures - failures and successes - as well as those mediocre ones that fall somewhere in the middle.  So follow along as I navigate my way through thousands of pins and share the results!