The Veggie Alphabet Challenge {week 4}

We are on week 4 of the Alphabet Veggie Challenge and last week we chose the letter:

Which I am sad and disappointed to report that I could not find one single vegetable that started with the letter of the week at grocery stores. Here is a list of some vegetables that start with the letter "D"

Dandelion Nettles

Daikon

Dulse

Dolichos Bean

I did however find a tropical fruit that starts with the letter "D" and it is one of my favorites:

Dragonfruit!

The texture is watery and porous and the little black seeds are similar to those in berries, you don't even notice them. I loved the combination of colors and I learned that the darker the pink and green the more ripe it is! 

For week 4 we are definitely choosing a letter that we can easily find vegetables in and a great variety! 

Can't wait to see what vegetables we will try and how we will enjoy them. What letter are you most excited for? 

Theme Thursday's week 12/29

This week's theme is: When preparing a recipe fails.

I am not a chef, I didn't attend any culinary institute and attain a Diploma stating it, I am a wife/mom that loves to cook for her family mostly from scratch even though sometimes it can come from a box (i.e. emergency food, i.e. I'm running late and everyone at home is hungry).

This year our family choose a Thanksgiving themed Christmas dinner which meant: Turkey, Ham, Mashed Potatoes, Rice Pilaf, Yams, Green Beans, Cranberry Sauce, Gravy, Stuffing and Macaroni and Cheese. Yes our family had all of the before mentioned for dinner and then for dessert apple and New York cheesecake.

Even though there were 12 of us, we still had plenty of left overs that we continued to enjoy until tonight. With the bone-in-ham I decided on Sunday I would do a Green Split Pea Soup. So I asked my mom for her recipe and compared it with my cookbooks. Needless to say mom's was easier and sounded tastier ;)

I do follow directions well when it comes to cooking, mostly because up until about 10 years ago I had never had the need or desire to cook. Now it is something I enjoy a lot! So tonight in the rush of being out of the house most of the day I read and read the recipe for the green split pea soup. I focused as much as I could on cooking, however I overlooked the amount of water required which resulted in our soup turning out extremely watery yet very tasty.

Luckily I had plan "B" just in case my cooking backfired on us, so I had use plan "B" and we got to eat a decent dinner. Mom and sister decided to try my soup -thank you mom! thank you sis!-.

No one is perfect in the kitchen, I firmly believe that even celebrity Chefs run into this kind of situations where a recipe doesn't exactly turn out the way it should. I also think that they change their outfits more than once while taping a cooking show to always look professional and  inspire us to try out cooking.

Hopefully through this I will inspire you to experiment and attempt outside your comfort zone cooking or maybe something you have been planning for a long time but were to concerned of failing to accomplish it.