Day 34 - Baked French Potatoes

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

I made some Baked French Potatoes today. I absolutely loved it. I would expect you guys would get tired of hearing that we like everything, but isn't that a good thing?

Anyway, this recipe was really easy, surprisingly. It took about 10 minutes to prepare. We used this handy dandy slicer called a mandolin from Pampered Chef, which my mom likes.

We also used garlic and onions, cooked that, layered the potatoes and the garlic and stuff, then covered with more potatoes, etc. Then you cover it all with chicken broth and bake.

Then, shabam! You've got yourself a bit of potatoes to eat.

Did you know that potatoes make you grow. Really, it's clinically proven to make you grow faster? I think.

I definitely think I shall do this one again. They're all gone. My brothers ate most of it.

One more thing. I think the reason we like most of the recipes is that I have picked things that don't sound gross. And I look for ingredients that I like, too. Just FYI. So I'm a good recipe picker, in my opinion, and maybe Jamie Oliver is a good recipe maker, too.

We're a good team. Me and Jamie should collaborate more often. Oh, maybe me and him can do a Gluten Free cookbook about our kids challenge. Wouldn't that be so cool?

Oaky. Thank you and goodnight. Come back tomorrow.

2 THUMBS UP

Day 26 - Boiled Eggs

Cookbook - Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

I’m really liking doing this. The challenge, I mean. It’s really quite fun. I mean I liked cooking before this, but I never really did it much. So this is super awesome.

Anyway, I was looking at jamieoliver.com, which is cool and you should check it out. So I was looking and I saw a a restaurant called Fifteen and it has a cooking classes.

Cool!! I know, right!!!!

And so I looked up the places where the restaurants are located and I found that there are only 3 in the world. There’s one in Amsterdam, one in Cornwall, and there’s one in Melbourne. When I found that out, I thought that was a bummer because I live in Texas and Texas isn’t near the Netherlands, England, or Australia. So it was a lose-lose situation because I was ready to go to Fifteen and eat there and look at the classes. Check it out, you know what I mean?

I just wanted to mention this because I thought it was pretty interesting and I thought that you guys would think it was pretty interesting.

Anyway, today I cooked 2 boiled eggs around 10 o’clock this morning. It was the first boiled eggs that I’ve made.

Just my luck, I misread the instructions and I used a frying pan instead of a sauce pan because I couldn’t think since I’d just woken up, so I asked Sophie and she said, “Use a frying pan”, although in her defense she says she was focusing on making scrambled eggs for her dear poor mother who was working hard writing a new book.

Hint: don't use a frying pan to boil an egg

And I cooked them to make them semi-firm and set the timer. After the timer went off, I cut one of them open and found the egg all over my cutting board.

A yolk disaster

That was not good. No way, Jose. It was a spectacular failure, but I got an A for effort, btw.

I figured out how not to use a frying pan to boil an egg but it was too late for the first one. I let the other egg cook in the frying pan for another ten minutes. I decided to risk opening it up. Looking at the picture, I cut off the top of the egg and it worked. It wasn’t semi-firm, it was firm. But it still tasted good. I made some bacon with it, and I ate it and it was good.

Spectacular!

I also made some guacamole around lunch time. I was inspired by Sam the Cooking Guy from Fit TV, a super cool, awesome guy you should check out. I should have used a tomato and the chipotle sauce he uses, but we didn’t have either so I used salsa. I also squeezed a little bit of lime and green onions and it was really good.

Sam the Cooking Guy's Gauc, minus the real tomato and chipotle

It was a very semi-successful cooking day, if I do say so myself, which I can since I’m me.

2 THUMBS UP!

Until next time...

Day 25 - Cilantro and Lime Rice

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today I made cilantro and lime rice! Which by the way, the food critics (in my house--mom and dad) said is amazing.

I thought it was okay. You finely chop cilantro. You wash and zest a lime. I did not know what zest meant before this cooking challenge. Now I know that zest means to grate the skin of a lemon, lime, or orange. I thought zest would taste kind of funky and would be sour, but I found out it's really useful in cooking and you use it a lot. Jamie Oliver uses it a lot.

Jared says it gives it a lot of flavor without using a lot of the fruit itself. You can save the fruit and sometimes the fruit has more sugar, so the zest is good because it gives a lot of flavor using a lot less fruit.

Once you cook your rice, you squeeze the juice of the lime into the rice, add the cilantro, zest, salt and pepper, and, as Jamie says, "one good lug of olive oil". It tastes exactly like Chipotle rice.

So that was a night with Sophie, the cooking girl.

1 1/2 THUMBS UP

Day 14 - Bacon and Cheese Omelette

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today I, as in Jared, made a delectable bacon, cheese, and egg omelette.

Obviously an omelette is made of eggs. (If you don't know that, you might want to consult your doctor about your knowledge)

It was fairly easy to make which was a relief after last night when we made two dishes and the failure of the lemony lemon cake.

All I did was put eggs in a bowl, put in some salt and pepper, mix it up, and then you put it into a hot frying pan after you put in a chunk of butter and let it melt.

New cooking station...

You wait until it's kind of cooked on the bottom but kind of not cooked on the top. Then you add the cheese and bacon, which I was supposed to cook in the pan, but I used the microwave.

Perfectly cooked omelette

When it's just about cooked, I folded it in half like a taco.

Folding it like a taco

It cooked for a couple more minutes and ta da! If you do this you will have made your first bacon and cheese omelette. We will be sending you your certificate in the mail and you will receive it shortly.

Perfecto!

Notice from the pictures that we have made a better work station so we're not running around all the time. We have added a cutting board that we're leaving out all the time just like Sam the Cooking Guy from Just Cook This... 'cause we don't have a whole counter made of wood like Jamie.

I like the new station. It brings joy to my heart. Seriously.

Happy Eating...until next time...

DOS (2) THUMBS UP

Day 8 - Evolution Cucumber Salad and Baked Cod Wrapped in Bacon with Rosemary...er, Basi

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revoloution

Tonight I, Jared, was feeling strangely exuberant so I made ‘dos’ dishes. I made some cod with bacon wrapped around it. A fun fact is that bacon is my favorite food. Also, I made some cucumber salad that I only had a bite of because I’m not a big cucumber fan. I do like pickles, though. Pickles have that weird pickle flavor while cucumbers are just crunchy water.

The salad was quite easy to prepare. All you do is skin some cucumbers (from my sister’s school class garden), cut them into bite sized pieces, add olive oil--6 tablespoons to be exact, two tablespoons of lemon juice, a bit of salt and pepper, and last, and definitely least (‘cause I didn’t like it so much), a tablespoon of plain yogurt. It called for chili and mint, but I we didn’t have those so I didn’t add them.

I give it an 1/8 of a thumb up, but everyone else thought it was super good and give it 2 THUMBS UP. My padre said that we should chill it for a while to make it better.

Moving on the the cod. It was super duper yummy because of the bacon, and because of the cod even though this was the first time I’ve ever had cod. I used some basil, but you can use rosemary. You slice it, mix it with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, put bacon strips around it and bake for 10 minutes at 475 degrees.

Next time for us, but the first time for you people reading, you should halfway cook the bacon so it’s actually crunchy by the time it’s done cooking. It’ll be very crunchy.

I would give this 1 3/4 THUMBS UP, but my parents and brothers give this 74...I mean, 2, THUMBS UP.

My dad said this was an $18.00 plate entre that you can make in approximately 1/2 hour and for way cheaper than $18.00.