I hate to start with a double negative...

but we had two meals that were DUDS this weekend! Not just weeknight meals - the precious weekend feasts. And I thought these were going to be such an auspicious way to start my little cooking blog.

First, if you've been around me at all lately, you know I've been obsessed with making my own pizza dough. This Friday, I decided to try a Whole Wheat crust. What a disappointment. I'm ALL ABOUT healthy...but I have learned that healthy can be all about flavor. This just didn't make the cut. It tasted like cardboard. I can come up with two positive things to say about this recipe: (1) I learned about and purchased Vital Wheat Gluten, and (2)Raw WW crusts are not as floppy as white flour, so they transfer more easily from rolling, to peel, to stone.

Here is the raw crust on my new peel:


We had pesto with tomatoes and turkey pepperoni:


Dough view:


Not to be defeated, I kept my head up and moved on to Saturday. I had seen this episode of Food 911 during the week, and it just looked so good. We love to eat tacos by the side of the road when we're in Mexico, so I thought it would be a little change from our normal chicken fajita night. But, it turns out, it might be the meal that totally pushes me to Vegitarianism. I'm not joking.

First of all, it took much longer than I anticipated to get it all going. But we were still on board - it was going to be yummy, we were sure. We finally got it all in the pot, and it was already looking very unappetizing to me.


It was finally done. We took it out of the pan with a big ole plop. Shudder.


Then we tried to shred it. It looked so easy on TV. It was not easy. Very tough - Tyler lied. We did just what he said, and it didn't "fall off the bone." We finally gave up and left it in strips. I thought it finally looked a little better when we got it in taco formation. But it didn't taste 2.5-hours-worth-of-work good.


I had also made Salsa Verde - a recipe from the same episode. I made it on Friday so it had time to sit. I had gone to lots of trouble to get the tomatillos for this wonderfully fresh dish. We all preferred the rotel dip.




Next week, I'm going back to white pizza crusts, and I imagine we'll be having fajitas with chicken or portabellas off the grill. Moving on...or back, I guess.