Successes in the Kitchen

If you know me well, you know that as much as I love to cook, I'm not always great at it. Baking I can do-always have been able to, and always loved it. Regular ole week night meals on the other hand-hit or miss. But I'm getting better! The problem is I always thought cooking was boring until sometime late in college, and then it was up to the Food Network to teach me everything I needed to know. Fortunately my husband is a fantastic cook so he has provided us with many restaurant worthy meals, and also taught me a lot about cooking. So its taken a lot of time to get here and now my successful meals are certainly a celebration, and I've been celebrating a lot lately! So I thought I'd share some of the better meals I have made over the past couple of weeks. I promise not to post any that are not also husband approved (and husband has high expectations of food!)

Cuban Black Beans and Rice
8 servings
-2 cups uncooked white rice
-2 Tbs olive oil
-2 yellow onions, thinly sliced
-1 red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
-1 green bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
-1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
-6 cloves of garlic minced
-2 14 oz cans of diced tomatoes, drained
-4 Tbs sherry cooking wine
-2 tsp ground cumin
-2 tsp ground coriander
-2 tsp dried oregano
-2 tsp hot pepper sauce (I use Louisiana)
-4 15.5 ounce cans black beans, drained
-black pepper

1. Cook rice according to package directions (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the PAMPERED CHEF RICE COOKER . It is in my top 5 kitchen essentials!)
2. Heat a large saucepan or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Swirl in the oil, then add the onion, bell peppers, and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, vinegar, cumin, coriander, oregano, and pepper sauce; cook 2 minutes. Add the beans, reduce the heat to medium, cover and simmer until thickened, about 10 minutes. Season with the pepper and serve with rice. Top with a little sour cream. (A serving is about 1 cup beans of 1/2 cup of rice)

Turkey Taco Soup
-a bit of Olive Oil
-2 lbs Extra Lean ground turkey (I promise you can not tell the difference between this and regular ole ground beef in this soup)
-1 onion, chopped
-A couple of cloves of garlic minced
-1 pkg. taco seasoning mix
-1 pkg. ranch dressing mix
-1 can each of:
white corn
yellow corn
pinto beans
red kidney beans (new orleans style are best if you can find them)
-rotel tomatoes
-1 small can of tomato sauce, when empty filled with water.

1. Heat olive oil and stir in onions and garlic. Add the ground turkey and cook through.
2. Add all other ingredients, stir and simmer for 30 minutes.

Easy as pie! Serve with some Mexican blend cheese, sour cream, and maybe fritos.