Oh boy, this weekend was a doozy.
My boyfriend's birthday was earlier in the week, and after treating ourselves to a sushi dinner and spending more than I care to admit, we decided to stay in this weekend and I'd cook us a nice dinner. Well, I tried.
Decided to make "French onion beef stroganoff" - I like French onion, I like beef stroganoff, great combination! Boyfriend then tells me he doesn't like cooked onions that much and requests I lessen the amount... oops (I'm not sure how I never noticed he doesn't like cooked onions, but +1 for learning something about him!).
The recipe called for a chuck roast cut into chunks... I usually will buy in bulk a bunch of chuck roast when it's on sale ($2.50-$3 per pound), cut it up into ~2ish lb chunks, wrap it all up and throw it in my freezer. I had one 2lb chunk left, so it would work out perfectly. I had forgotten to take it out of the freezer when I wanted to, so I spent a lot of the afternoon waiting and hoping it would defrost in time. Success! By the time I was ready to cook, it was just a little frozen, but fine for cooking. I unwrap it... and it's pork loin. Whoops. I briefly debate whether "French onion pork stroganoff" can be a thing, but decide to make an emergency run to the grocery store to pick up beef and a cheesecake (oh the damn cheesecake... will be explained). Chuck roast was not on sale, but they had the prechopped stew tips thing (I honestly can't remember what they're called) on sale for $4.99/lb, so $10 is spent on emergency meat.
The rest of the cooking mostly goes according to plan (poured a bit too much red wine into the pan but hey, not really complaining). Second to last step is adding sour cream. So I open up the fridge to pull it out... no where in sight. Can't find the damn new package of sour cream I had bought on Friday. Sorta frantic, cuz everything is bubbling away on the stove and I need it now, so I spot a container of sour cream that was in the back of my fridge.... that expired in April. Hmm... open it up - it passes the sniff test, take a little taste and it seems fine. Into the pan it goes! It looked a bit weird, but ok. Opened the fridge to put something else back in, and the new container of sour cream is right there. Right on the top shelf, smack in the center, perfectly in sight. Either I'm going blind or I have a horrible case of fridge elves.
Last step is adding cheese to the top and letting it melt. I recently discovered that buying blocked cheese and shredding it yourself tastes sooooo much better (probably late to the party on that one). But the one good thing about already shredded cheese is... it's already shredded. Shredding it takes time, and I had completely forgotten to do it. So I scramble and start shredding as fast as I can, and instead of getting a nice, even layer of cheese on top, there are just gobs thrown in. Oops.
I mentioned not knowing what meat I bought... it definitely had "stew" on the label, so I don't know if it's naturally tough and it softens when making stew, or if I severely overcooked it, but it was as tough as shoe leather. My jaw was exhausted from chewing by the time I finished.
Oh, that frickin cheesecake. So earlier I told Boyfriend I'd make him a cake, and he requested cheesecake (his favorite). I don't particularly like cheesecake and have never made it before, but it's just cream cheese and sugar, right? Easy peasy. I find a recipe for a twix cheesecake (his favorite candy bar), so hey why don't we try that! Calls for two cups heavy cream, which already seems like a lot of liquid, and heavy cream and whole milk are essentially the same, right? (Spoiler: no.) I figure why buy cream I won't use again when I can just buy milk that I will use.
The cheesecake also calls for caramel, which is just sugar and butter melted down, so why spend money on sauce when I can make it myself? About a year or two ago, I made a caramel chocolate pecan brittle that was frickin delicious, and I made my own caramel perfectly on my first try. Could totally replicate that again, right? First attempt at caramel, the cat distracted me for 30 seconds, where it burnt most spectacularly. I poured it into a mason jar to cool and stirred it around (I was hoping I could salvage it), but by the time it cooled, it was like dried cement. I couldn't get the spoon out, let alone the caramel/cement out of the jar. The whole thing ended up going in the garbage (RIP wide mouth mason jar, you will be missed). Second attempt, I add a bit of water to the sugar, which will (in theory) help the sugar cook/melt evenly and slow the time it takes for it to burn (it just takes a lot longer in general since the water needs to evaporate). The sugar ended up burning before the water evaporated, so yay. At least that one I was able to toss into a baggie and save my jar. I ended up throwing sweetened condensed milk into my slow cooker and making dulce de leche overnight. Close enough.
As I mentioned, I thought 2c of milk/cream seemed like too much. The batter was super liquidy. It's supposed to chill in the fridge for 6+ hours (no baking). 8 hours later, I discovered that I invented a new dish - cheesecake soup. Anyone wanna try it? No? Didn't think so. That's why I spent an additional $12 on a cheesecake.
There was one success - I made bread for the first time and not only did it come out edible, but delicious! So yay for one win.