Day 50 - Piece by Piece Omelet

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

Whoo-hoo! It's day 50 of our challenge! Can you believe we have cooked for 50 days, straight? I can't. I think that not many people in general could have done this. A lot of people would have given up on day 2, 10, or 49.

I've wanted to give up multiple times, but I didn't. Sometimes I have just been so tired, or feeling lazy, or doing homework and I just didn't want to cook. Also writing the blog is hard, even though we dictate a lot of the time to my mom. But I like Jamie Oliver's message and want other people to join the food revolution. Somewhere deep inside my loving heart, a voice told me, "You have to do this. It's your destiny." I listened to the voice. Now you may not think this, but that was actually very sincere. Minus the voice part.

To cook for day 50, we did an omelet. Now this isn't just any old omelet, it was the king of omelets. It also wasn't in the morning that we had this omelet, we had breakfast for dinner.

Now, originally this recipe is a potato and chorizo omelet. But the chorizo my dad bought, which was a vegetarian chorizo, had wheat in it.

So I did mine with sausage.

The recipe is pretty long, but just follow the link, it'll take you there and you can see.

We didn't have a pan that can be used on the stove and put into the oven so I kind of burned the bottom of the omelet. I tried flip it since the top was still a little raw, and it kind of fell apart, and that's how this omelet earned the name of Piece by Piece Omelet. The potatoes definitely added a better all-around flavor because it compliments the dish.

The reviews were for the potato and vegetarian chorizo omelet: 2 THUMBS. My mom says 2 THUMBS UP. She won't even eat regular chorizo because she says it's gross.

For the sausage and potato Piece by Piece Omelet, I give it 2 THUMBS UP. Caleb, my 7 year old brother says, "It was delicious, but the crunchy bottom is more toasted than I thought. It was delicious."

Day 49 - Ice Cream with Smush Ins

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

Can you believe it? Today is day 49. Sophie or I have cooked everyday for 49 days! Only about 130 days to go to get to our 6 month goal. I feel this is pretty intense and awesome. I'm very proud of myself, and of Sophie.

Sometimes it's been a hassle because of our schedules, but most of the time it's good. I've tried so many new things.

I'm so glad I'm doing this cooking challenge, even if I challenged myself.

Today was one of those busy days. Older brothers are at the football game (they're in band) 2 hours away. Sophie went to a friends. There was school, art club, and doctor's appointments. So I went easy tonight. We made an interesting recipe called Smush Ins. The reason behind the name is that you just take ice cream and just smush in whatever you want.

It's basically really easy. I hadn't ever thought of doing this, but it is quite ingenious. It definitely reminds me of a place called Cold Stone Creamery, but way cheaper for my parents.

I did vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. I'm a simple kind of guy. It was delicious.

My dad did chocolate ice cream with nuts, chocolate chips, and peanut butter.

Next time he said he's adding a banana.

My mom didn't really want any. She's not an ice cream lover. Crazy, right? She ate one of the cookies from yesterday.

I say you can't fully experience life until you've tried Smush Ins. So, go on, get cracking!

2 THUMBS UP!

Day 48 - Chargrilled Marinated Vegetables

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

No one really wanted to cook at all tonight. We didn't know what to make, but we had vegetables from the fruit and veggies vegetables. This is where my mom got a bunch of organic food and it's SO good.

So we made some grilled chicken, some biscuits, corn, and potatoes. My mom really wanted some more vegetables so my mom saw this recipe on Jamie Oliver's web site. It was Chargrilled Marinated Vegetables.

It was squash, zucchini, yellow bell pepper, garlic, and green onions. Jared sliced the vegetables and I made this marinade with our fresh basil. I used a mortar and pestle to smash it all up. That mortar and pestle hasn't seen daylight since 1922 (or my mom says for a long time). It was fun to use. I got to smash stuff. Once the basil was all smashed and the vegetables were grilled on the grill pan on our stove, I added olive oil and some balsamic vinegar to the basil and then tossed it all together.

The verdict was that my mama and papa LOVED it. My brother, Alex, liked it okay. Me and Jared didn't like it so much because it was a lot of vegetables all together. My dad said it was a $10 vegetable dish and he LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it.

So my mom will make this one again, and I guess I'll help her. I give it 1/2 THUMB UP, but mama and papa give it 2 THUMBS UP.

Day 47 - Simple Tomato Sauce

Cookbook - Jamie's Dinners

Once upon a time, there was a year old boy named Sam that was part of a family (hint hint wink wink). The mother of this child trusted him not to eat any chocolate chips from an unopened bag laying on the counter.

It took much of this boy's willpower not to eat it, but sadly, his willpower crumbled when the wind caught the scent of the chocolate chips and blew right by his face. Checking where everyone was, he sneaked back into the kitchen, opened the chocolate chip bag, and gobbled some down.

During his snacking time, the younger brother, Jared, happened upon Sam and found him eating the chocolate chips. There was plain horror upon Jared's face. So now, to this day, this family is forced to hide the chocolate chips and cookie dough from the terror that is SAM.

Dun dun dun....

That happened today right before I started making my dish. There's never a dull moment in this household.

This sauce is kind of similar to the Classic Tomato Sauce. In this recipe, the only thing you do differently is you use plum tomatoes instead of diced tomatoes (in the can) and you use basil stalks. On the other recipe, the pasta kinds of absorbs the sauce, minus the tomatoes. This one is more of just a topping.

Anyway, you chop some basil stalks (no leaves), garlic, and put in a pan with olive oil.

Add some plum tomatoes straight from the can. Let that simmer for 30 minutes. There is stuff you can do with it from there, like tear up basil leaves, along with some balsamic vinegar and a bit of melted butter.

You can also add meatballs, and stuff.

So basically, this is a great, easy recipe.

PS: Jamie Oliver's assistant recommended we get this book. So we did. This is our second recipe from it.

Cookies to be hidden from Sam, the terror.

Day 46 - Cauliflower and Cheese Soup

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Cauliflower. Not something that sounds super-duper appetizing.

Think again, my little friend. It is actually quite good...if you know how to cook it. And Jamie Oliver does know how to cook it because he's, like, a cooking genius.

So today, as you might have guessed, I made something with cauliflower. I made Cauliflower and Cheese soup, to be precise. Now you must be thinking, "Boy, they must just buy cauliflower for their health!"

Although it might seem like that, that's actually quite a pitiful guess for we only had the cauliflower for one reason. We recently, like today, joined a fruit and veggie co-op. My mother came home today with a whole boatload of fresh fruits and veggies. Where'd did she get them? Can you figure it out? Yep, the co-op.

And there, out of the blue, a surprise sprang...a head of cauliflower!

**Gasp!**

And so I thought to myself, "What is cauliflower doing here?" I soon figured out that we had to make a dish with cauliflower tonight. This had to be done in between my piano lesson (I've been playing for 7 years, just FYI), band registration night, and 4-H (which is a group which has a lot of activities and things to do, including cooking). In all, including eating, we had about 35 minutes to make this.

All I did was get garlic, carrots, cauliflower, onion, celery (which we didn't have). Chop, chop, chop it.

Saute it in olive oil.

Meanwhile bring chicken (or veggie) to a boil. Once the veggies are soft, add them to the broth. I covered and cooked it for about 10 minutes, then I used a hand blender and blended it. I added cheese, nutmeg, salt and pepper, and dried mustard.

Ladle it into a bowl. I think it tasted good with sausage bread. It wasn't disgusting like you may think cauliflower would be. I think that cauliflower is a veggie that has a majorly wrong stereotype.

I liked the soup so I give it 1 1/2 THUMBS UP. So did Sophie.

This is the salad Sophie and my mother made to go with our soup.

Not bad for 35 minutes.

Day 45 - Spinach, Spinach, Spinach

Cookbook - Jamie's Dinners (our new cookbook from E-bay!)

Today I made a spinach dish using our new cookbook. The debut of the cookbook was quite good. It was really extremely easy to make, and that's really saying something because we've made a whole lot of easy things since we started this.

All you do is put some olive oil, butter, and a little bit of nutmeg into a frying pan.

Put a good hunk of spinach into the pan. And it's amazing how fast the spinach cooks down.

You squeeze a lemon over it, and Voila!, you have made yourself a very fancy spinach dish.

I thought it tasted okay since I'm not a huge spinach fan. I give it about 1 THUMB UP. I'm pretty proud of myself, though, for trying cooked spinach. My personal preference is raw spinach though.

How about you? Cooked or raw?

Thank you, and good night!

Day 44 - Dill Biscuits

Recipe Adapted from Jamie Online and Pampered Chef

Today there was a bit of an argument between Sophie and me (Jared) in the kitchen.  This  was not very extreme.  It was pretty normal because we bicker a lot.  Sophie was trying to tell me what to do and how to cook and I got mad.  I kind of spoke loudly (or yelled) at her and made a rude face, but in my opinion it wasn't actually that rude, but anyway it was a battle of wills.  Neither one of us won.  Except she sort of did since I got in trouble.  But the cooking must go on.

Sophie went to a Pampered Chef party with my mom today and won a Cookie Press.  So that was pretty crazy.  She wanted to make these Cheddar Dill Crisps and Jamie has a recipe for Dill Biscuits which are pretty similar.  Because we went Gluten Free, we adapted or changed the recipes around to make our own Dill Biscuit Crisp type thing.

The Cookie Press was an epic fail.  

It didn't really do what it was supposed to do.  We think the dough was too thick.  

We also used the new GF Bisquick instead of GF flour because we ran out of GF flour.  So we just experimented with the dough in true Jamie Oliver fashion.  It was really easy.

You mix some butter and cheese and flour and dill, then you mold it and bake it.  That was pretty much it. 

They taste pretty good.  I give them 2 9/8ths THUMBS UP (also known as 3 1/8 for those who are math challenged). 

Sophie says a million, kagillion thumbs up.

Thank you, and good night.