Adventures of cooking

     Today I cooked!!!!!!!  The November 2009 Southern Living Magazine is full of yummy things to cook.  So I thought, lets try some of them.   This one was even in the Healthy Living section.  Today it was Cornbread Stuffing with Sweet Potato and Squash  page 114.    Now sweet hubby does not like stuffing.  He say it looks dead and blah.  Well this dish does not.   The time given on the recipe says total time is 1 hour and 57 minutes.  It took me 2 hours and 15 minutes from start to finish and not even with a break for Facebook.   

   It started with oil and minced garlic.   I don't use it enough to keep fresh on hand.  It usually dries up and looks like some wrinkled old prune.  Don't think that is what it is suppose to look like.   So I buy the minced in a jar and it never goes bad.  Did you know that when minced garlic and hot oil meet that it acts like popcorn going wild and crazy in your pan?   Well I didn't and was batteling  it  like a wild woman.  Then I thought, Annette take the pan off of the fire.    

The cutting up of the butternut squash and sweet potatoes was more time consuming than I thought.   Once before I had cut up raw sweet potatoes and they were hard as rocks.   I had the bright idea to put them in the microwave for a few minutes to soften a tad.  Thank goodness I remembered to punch little holes in them or that would have been a realllllllly big mess.  ARG!!!    The rest of the adventure went pretty good, now remember I am a baker not a cook.  Of those of you know there is a big difference between the two.    Cakes, pies and candy are a snap but it is a true adventure to cook .   Now I can make roasts, mexican food and Chicken fried steak.  The basics like that.  Our nieces love my flat enchiladas.    Another point about my cooking wares is to  remember the only real pans I have is when we first got married in 1961-yes that far back and I got most of the pans with S&H Green Stamps.  What a treasure those were.   We won't even go into that adventure with the pans with cooking this dish.   

It was a pretty good dish, and for Cat---even healthy.   The toasted pecans on top added some yummy crunch and the blending of all the flavors were really good. It is colorful also, not dead and blah looking .  I do think maybe a tad more sage or some pepper might have jazzed it up a tad. 

This it it for the Cornbread Stuffing today.  I forgot it was Taco Tuesday at Rosa's so we  just sampled the stuffing and will really eat it tomorrow.  Course our samples were a nice portion.      Remember----never trust a skinny cook.