CSA Recipe Fail – Roasted Sweet Turnips

I’ll admit that I panicked.  There were so many vegetables in my fridge and I didn’t know how long they would stay good, so I wanted to cook the turnips before I left it too long and had to throw them out.  I’m only human, see, and as a human I am prone to making bad decisions.  I tell you this because mistakes are a great learning tool for me.

I had already turned the oven on for the beets, so I figured that I might as well roast some sweet turnips as well.  I wasn’t planning on eating them at the moment, but I figured that I could treat them as “leftovers”.

The problem was that I didn’t have a real/meal plan.  As any good heist movie will tell you, you need a plan.

I was thinking of making turnip greens to go with it, but then I remembered that I didn’t really like greens (it’s more of a texture thing than taste).  So after cooking the turnips I put them in the fridge in the hopes that I would think of something to add to them.  I didn’t think of anything, however, so a couple days later I re-heated them and ate them as is.  At that point I learned that some of them weren’t quite cooked all the way through.  I had even cooked them for 15 extra minutes. Next time I’ll put the oven at 425, like the beets, instead of 350.

If I had just calmed down and made a plan it would have been better.  I would have realized that I just needed to go to a store and buy potatoes and carrots, and then I could make a hash (something we always had for breakfast the morning after Sunday dinner, using up any leftover boiled carrots, potatoes, and turnips).  It could have been much more delicious.

Next time, turnips. Next time.

 

 

 

Baking-Fail: No-Bake Cheesecake w/ Graham Cracker Crust

I made such a mess of this.

There’s no excuse – it’s a really easy recipe and I’ve made it a hundred times in the past.  But this time something went horribly wrong…

Okay, maybe I’m being overly dramatic.  It’s not like the world ended or people were poisoned.  I just made a crappy, slightly-inedible crust.  Sometimes things go wrong.  It happens.

It’s been many years since I’ve made this recipe, and the last time I did it I used a pre-made graham crust which was already broken when I purchased it (they were all broken), and I didn’t care much for the taste of it.  The time before that I accidentally made the base with Teddy-Graham-Cracker crumbs, which was WAY too sweet (especially since I didn’t realize the mistake until after I’d mixed in sugar).

This time I was going to make my own graham crust, and I was going to do it properly.  Or so I thought.

I didn’t measure the butter, but it looked about the right amount & it gave me a good enough consistency (able to stick together but not lump together).  Although I don’t think that was the problem…

Yup, I’m going to blame my oven.

It’s difficult for me to remember which recipes require the -25 degree treatment or the -50 degree treatment or can stay at the correct temperature, but this time I should have brought the temperature down by 50 degrees.  I also should have taken the crust out when it smelled done (I have a strangely acute sense of smell when it comes to baking – when something smells done, it’s usually done).  Instead I left it in too long and the crust was over-baked.  Of course, I didn’t realize this until after I had put the filling on top.

So what’s a person to do when you’ve made cheesecake, but the crust is extremely hard to cut and chew?  You make lemonade out of lemons and you scrape the filling off and eat it by itself.

Also, you make meticulous notes for next time…