Cooking through The Pioneer Woman's Cookbook - Post 1

So, it's officially here.  The first of 26 posts jounaling our journey to cook through The Pioneer Woman's cookbook in 2010.  I honestly feel a little overwhelmed with this challenge which probably isn't great since this is the first post about it, but since we were gone ALL WEEK last week this week has been my only chance to cook and it's a lot of pressure to try and cook dinner every night.  (I mean, really, cook dinner every night?!?! Only superwoman does that right!?!?) So, I decided to just try and do four recipes this week -- one main dish (Chicken Spaghetti), one side dish (Cheese Grits), one bread (Buttermilk Biscuits), and one dessert (Chocolate Sheet Cake).  Two out of four isn't bad right?!?!?! :) 

My plan was to make the cake and grits on Thursday but they got better dealed to go out with our friends.  I think friends ALWAYS take precendence!

If you want to join this little challenge there is still plenty of time.  There are only 60 some odd recipes in the cookbook so as long as you make one a week and some weeks make more than one you've got plenty of time! 

I actually did learn some things making the two recipes that I did this week. 

Chicken Spaghetti
- PW (that's short for Pioneer Woman in case you didn't know) recipes always kind of scared me because there are SO MANY steps! But, you know what? Two of the steps in this recipe included cutting your bell pepper one way and the next step was to turn it the other way in order to dice it.  Such easy steps!
- I'm sure that The PW would be mad at me for saying this, but next time I'm making this I'm not using a fryer chicken (or fryer chicken pieces like what I actually used).  I think any type of boiled chicken (be it tenders or whatever) would be fine as long as you get it into bite sized pieces!
- Don't skimp on seasoning's.  The PW is reliable and she'll tell you what to watch out for in order to not make your dish too spicy, just make sure you put in all that she says is required and don't wimp out and think you know better.  Chances are good that you (at least I) don't know better than Ree!
Summary: The whole getting the meat off of the chicken bones was a little more effort than I would like but the result was a great pasta dish that was filling and didn't leave you feeling like you ate something really unhealthy.  Overall a pretty managable dish that lives up to the hype.

Buttermilk Biscuits
- I had never made homeade biscuits before so I didn't have a biscuit cutter.  I used an old trick from my grandmother -- an upside down glass.  Worked like a charm!
- Make sure you make your biscuits thicks.  Mine were too thin and so they looked kind of wimpy.  They don't really rise a lot.
- Make sure you use fresh ingredients.  I'm thinking that maybe flour that had been in the pantry for a while or baking powder that I opened over Christmas might have caused these to be a little drier and heavier than they were intended to be?
Summary: I'm going to try these again because I don't feel like I did them justice.  But my experience with them this week was that they weren't worth the effort.

One other thing that I noticed this week while looking through the cookbook is that I need a cast iron skillet.  And I found while making the spaghetti that I need a saucepan larger than the one's I have but smaller than the humongous stockpot that I have.  So I'm on a mission to find those things this week!  Thankfully I have great knives and most other things that I need from our generous wedding gifts, but make sure you have what you need before you get in the kitchen to cook a recipe!  That would be disappointing!

In case you're just jumping on the bandwagon please know that my bi-weekly updates probably won't be this detailed.  I just have some time during nap time to make this one so.  Our goal is just to cook every recipe in The Pioneer Woman Cooks in the year 2010.  The order doesn't matter nor does the number of recipes that you cook in a two week period.  I will be posting a post to link to every other week.  If you could link to your post about your current adventures on my post we can check them all out!

I can't wait to read about your Pioneer Woman adventures! Just add a link to your blog POST (not your blog, the static link to your post) in the MckLinky carnival below.