And the results are in...

A short time ago, I sent an email (since I didn't want to blog out of line) about my culinary prowess as I prepared 3 hearty meals to set aside for cold,wintery days. As detailed in my email I experienced a few small glitches or hiccups, if you will, in preparing said meals. But at the time, I had yet to sample any of the dishes. Now I have. And I thought you'd all be holding your breath waiting to hear how they really turned out.

First, the cream of carrot soup. Okay, so I haven't actually sampled this one yet. But a quick spoonful before freezing suggested it would be tasty, if not a little salty.

Next, Beth's stew. A few things to note: One, I used the slow cooker SOUP mix instead of the stew mix. Oops. But a bit of trusty corn starch fixed that little problem (this, after I learned from earlier mistakes - see next paragraph). Two, I used the food processor to chop the carrots (since I was chopping carrots for 3 dishes). It didn't so much chop the carrots as shred them. And for a stew, I think you really want bigger chunks. Three, I didn't use the Falls' stewing beef. From what I understand, this also undoubtedly adversely affected the final flavour. Still, overall, not bad. Not great. Not as good as Beth's; yet, still good enough that I'm serving it to company on Wednesday!

Finally, Vic's meat pies. These had a lot to live up to (my memory had built these up to epic proportions in the 2 years it took me to actually make them from the recipe Vic gave me around the time of Hannah's birth). As you might recall from the email, I had a little misunderstanding with the corn starch - and thereby inadvertently added a rather shocking amount of it to the pot. Last night, I pulled a meat pie from the freezer with equal amounts hope and trepedation. I started defrosting it in the microwave. It seemed to be taking forever. I switched to full power. Some progress. I returned to speed defrost, afraid of scorching the outside before the inside had thawed. When it appeard to be thawing satisfactorily, I returned to full power. A small, nagging voice in my head said, "It seems odd that it's been in the microwave for almost 10min. and isn't ready yet..." At last, it was heated through. And still very solid. Oh, so very, very solid. I cut part of it into bite-sized pieces for Hannah, and put the remaining portion on a plate for myself. Before I had a chance to sample my own, Hannah announced that she was "all done". Her plate was still full. She went on to explain, "I don't like this. I can't eat it." A little deflated, I started to eat my portion. Something wasn't right. At all. However, because I waited so long to make these, because they still took so much effort, I ate everything on my plate. And then I ate everything from Hannah's plate. Someone was going to have meat pie for dinner and it was quickly becoming obvious that someone had to be me. And there are still 7 more portions in the freezer! As for poor Hannah, she quite happily gobbled down all her Kraft Dinner and even asked for seconds.

On a positive note, I made play dough yesterday and it turned out just fine! It might even taste better than the meat pies...