Notes from Lesson 1

So I learned a few important lessons after this one adventure:

1) Cooking is FUN and christine rocks my world for doing this!
2) Don't switch phones before you send the pictures you took of your first real meal on the original phone
3) Be leary of going to the Safeway in SW DC, not the greatest selection

But to be more serious, i did learn a lot.

The meal consisted of:
- Havarti & Crackers as an appetizer (learned an important lesson here to have SOME food ready in case the real meal will still take some time when people arrive)

- Corn (need to get more adventurous w/ the veggie next time, but store will dictate this)

- Carribean Jerk Chicken (this actually turned out REALLY well. My piece was undercooked (just got impatient more than anything) but the other couple were fantastic. Great/easy meal for sure (just needs a little planning in advance), but i really like the Carribean Jerk seasoning.

- Twice Baked Potatoes (This was my last minute change to the menu when i decided i felt like using potatoes). Overall, I was proud of myself for being able to try something new. My biggest problem was i didn't have anything to really mix/beat the potatoes prior to the second baking portion, so they were too hard to start with. Then I probably overcooked them.... so overall they were just too hard. Tasted alright, but not what I would have ideally wanted.

Biggest struggle with the meal... How do you manage having multiple things going at the same time and then having everything be ready at the same time? I really need to figure it out so that everything is hot at the same time and ready to prepare (this was one of the reasons the one piece of chicken was undercooked). So i'm not really sure. Overall, I was pretty proud of myself and am looking forward meal number 2 (really 3, the spaghetti I made the other night was great...simple, but learned that i will ALWAYS use ground turkey from now on for the spaghetti sauce, tastes so much better than ground beef). BRING ON THE NEXT LESSON!!!