Sunday, September 19, 2010

Can you cook Rachael Ray recipes in 30 minutes? The beginning.....

I was perusing through my archives a couple of weeks ago looking for a certain recipe that I couldn't remember enough about to do a search on, and I came across a couple of posts from a few years back about Rachael Ray recipes I'd made, and how I was not able to get them made in 30 minutes. I must admit that RR has grown on me over the past while and when Paxton was a wee baby who would only sleep if he was in my arms, we watched a LOT of Rachael, both her cooking show and her talk show.

Eventually (ie within a couple of months) I'll be working somewhere (hopefully somewhere much much MUCH better than the place I left in November)  and I wonder a lot how everything will get done. I know it will, it's not like I'm the first person to have a kid and work, but it seems so overwhelming right now. My to do list is long and painful, but I've added to it to find some good solid fast recipes that I can whip up after
work, recipes that won't keep me in the kitchen for hours with cooking or cleaning.

So I thought hey, I should give her 30 minute recipes another try. And this time, use a stopwatch to see how long it really takes me.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be posting 6 Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals, how long each one took, and what we thought.

The rules are:
- no panicking. By which I mean, just because I am timing myself I won't rush. I will cook at a normal pace.
- make the recipe as close to as written as possible. I rarely follow recipes to the letter, but in this case I will. however, I may
- make substitutions as necessary. If a recipe calls for boneless chicken but I have some bone-in in the freezer, I will use that. If a recipe calls for linguine and I have spaghetti, that's ok too.

I think this will be fun, y'all. See you tomorrow.