Eggs Benedict - Easy Mode

I say easy mode because I didn't make my hollandaise sauce from scratch nor did I bake my own english muffins. This was a quickie breakfast made on a Tuesday morning before work

Eggs Benedict: poached egg and ham on an English muffin topped with hollandaise sauce.

I started off wrong, though. I made the packaged hollandaise sauce. Doh! The sauce ended up being a little thicker than it probably should have been.

The grease popping from the ham was a good wake up.

After frying up the ham, I stated on the hard part - egg poaching.

Actually, egg poaching is easy. Really. If I can do it...
Boiling some water - get a good rolling boil. I added salt and vinegar. The vinegar was a suggestion from a culinary-inclined friend.
Crack an egg in it.
Let the egg cook some so that the white congeals and yolk cooks a little bit.
Fish it out with a laddle or spoon.

Voila

Manicotti

Manicotti is hands-down my favorite baked pasta dish and comfort food. So I gave it a go last night. I also did this while getting drunk of margaritas.

Ingredients were purchased from the local farmer's market and Kroger, both of which were madhouses yesterday. But after battling the hordes of yuppie Decaturites and I found success.

Here is the recipe I followed
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Three-Cheese-Manicotti/Detail.aspx

It's the basic recipe you will find on any box of manicotti pasta - mostly.

1 package of manicotti pasta - while I could *attempt* to make that fresh, NO.
16 oz of ricotta cheese - I've seen this hand made before without too much difficulty, but I just bought some from the store
6 0z of mozzarella, shredded
6 oz of monterey jack, shredded
2 tbsp of sour cream - this I've never seen before but I assume it helps with the consistency of the cheese mix
1/3 cup dried breadcrumb - I got plain instead of seasoned and I don't think it made the slightest difference
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 cups Spaghetti sauce.

I decided to make my own spaghetti, cause I see my roommates do it all the time and I know it can't be that *hard*. Plus, they laughed at me last time I bought sauce in a jar.

So I poked my roommate on how to make spaghetti sauce:

Can of tomato paste, can of tomatos, can of mushrooms, onion, group beef, spices, chianti

brown the mushrooms and onions in oil with some pepper and garlic and salt

1:31 PM put them in a pot with the tomato paste and tomatos

mix/crush everything up

brown beef with some chianti, salt, papper

drain it

mix it with tomato sauce

let simmer for a bit

Alright, no problem.

I made this sauce to go with my manicotti - it was delicious.

Made the sauce, boiled the pasta - I should have added oil to the water because some of the tubes stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Made the cheese stuffing,, stuffed the tubes - any that split and many did, I just put the split side down.

Covered the manicotti with sauce and cheese and baked. And here's where I learned a basic cooking lesson. I should have added the sauce, covered it with tin foil, baked it for 30 minutes, added the cheese, and finished it off.

My manicotti had some burnt cheese on top, but otherwise was absolutely delicious.

Introduction

Hello internets, I'm Jen.

I am almost 30 years old - and I only know how to cook a very limited amount of things without referring to some recipe and following the step by step instructions. That's no good. Besides, recipes screw things up sometimes.

Most people I know around me can cook, but I cannot.

So I figured for my own personal benefit, I'd blog my cooking efforts (Julie and Julia style), and see if I get any better.

I've got a couple of Alton Browns that I'll work out of eventually, but for now, I'm going to start with my favorite foods.