The Adventure Continues

I've been feeling all domestic these past couple of weeks. Which is good since, you know, housewife. But I've been cooking a lot more and trying new recipes, which is exciting. The increase culinary adventurousness seems to have unintentionally corresponded to the new year so it's like I've made a hidden resolution or something, but I haven't. It's simply because my shoulder is feeling like normal (finally!) so I can once again do things like use kitchen implements.

Poor Dan - for a while frozen pizza was seen much too frequently at our dinner table. But hey, it was painless to cook! Of course, now that all cooking is painless, I can get back to the fun stuff. Such a crawfish étouffée.

I don't know why Cajun food intimidates me so. Perhaps because my favorite gumbo recipe takes three plus hours to make and includes both carving a chicken and shredding it once it is cooked. Or maybe because of the roux. Anything with a roux both excites me and makes me a bit nervous. But in a good way. I love roux-making. But, for whatever reason, I had been too chicken to make my planned étouffée until just recently. As in Monday.

I used a combination of four recipes, all from the Talk About Good Cookbook. And I feel a bit dumb being intimidated by it because it ended up being fantastically easy. Which is good because it also ended up being fantastically delicious so I will be making this again.

I'm not sure what's next in my culinary fun-ness. Well, I do have plans to make Alton Brown's Good Eats meatloaf, but it's meatloaf so I don't think it is that adventurous. Plus, Dan and I (finally) inventoried our freezers so I'll be picking out some recipes to use the goodies we have in there - lots of pork and venison. Fortunately, I have a few good venison recipes that I really like (a wet hash and a barbecue dish) but I might branch out a bit. See if I can't substitute venison in some lamb or mutton recipes.

Anyway, it's nice to be back really cooking again. Yay for non-hurt shoulders!

(Of course, last week I improperly lifted something heavy so my lower back is killing me, but I'm going to ignore that for now because it's gonna go away soon. It will. I am determined. Denial is a lovely thing!)