"I AM NOT A CrOOK!"

Shabree and I had smoothies for brunch. They were really good. She wanted them in my martini glasses and wanted two Barbie dolls to be posed with them when I took the photo. The mint sprigs were my idea. I have a feeling we will be having smoothies for breakfast every morning now. And although the most enjoyable thing about cooking, to me, is posing dolls or something with it for the photo, we probably won't be doing that every morning.
The question of the day at Cookbook Junkie's blog gave me the idea to take a photo of my messy cookbook shelves. The upper shelf is mostly 'real' cookbooks. The lower shelf holds Taste of Home magazines. The other two cookbooks were in the shelf beneath that one, so I got them out to put in front. The pumpkin cookbook was sent to me by a wonderful internet friend, because she knows how much I like pumpkins and scarecrows and Halloween things. The cookbook has loads of hand drawn illustrations. The other one - which my daughter always refered to as the "Oh No! Mom's Cooking Dinner Cookbook" - in a binder filled with plastic page covers which I have filled with loose recipes, recipes given to me by friends, and recipes from newspapers or magazines. Some of the pages are done up fancy like a scrapbook, and some are just a magazine page slid into the plastic protector. Recipes from friends have notes added about the person they are from and the occasion it was served, etc. And there are sections for our personalized holiday menus and ideas. Cookbook Junkie's question of the day today was, (paraphrased, probably) "Do you remember where you got each of your cookbooks?" I think I do, although I didn't go through them all to check myself. And then, here was dinner.... I got this recipe from someone's blog today. If I remember correctly, they had gotten from one of the well-known commercial recipe sites....I think. Anyway, it wasn't a hit with us. Barbecued Turkey Burgers and Baked French Fries. I completely lost Shabree, who had been anxious to help cook dinner, when she read the turkey recipe and saw chopped onions listed. The burgers were dry and had kind of an odd flavor, with bbq sauce, mustard, chili powder, garlic powder, etc. mixed in. Oh, and instead of using a grill pan (because I didn't understand part of the instructions), I just cooked them in a frying pan on the stove. Maybe that's why they didn't live up to their potential. Um...besides that, they were a tad burnt. The baked french fries were better, but I used red potatoes because that's what I had on hand, and it really needed to be the larger baking potatoes. They got overcooked, so were kind of mushy inside. The raw potatoes were shaken in a plastic bag with olive oil, paprika, garlic powder, chili powder and onion powder before baking. So all in all, if someone actually followed the recipes and instructions as they were meant to be, instead of 'ad-libing', like I did, the results would probably be much better.