The Kitchen Challenge

It's no secret Greg and I like to cook. It's also no secret we love a challenge.

Last weekend, we decided to combine the two and challenge ourselves to cook things we normally only ever would know to order at a restaurant or in a can. On the agenda: black beans, tortilla chips, creme brule and French fries. These were fun projects and the results were pleasantly surprising. The photos below are the finished products of our challenges and the delicious meal that ensued.

First up was Greg's project, tortilla chips. The guy simply loves chips and since the doctor recommended he lower his sodium intake, he's been schemeing a way to find chips he can eat. The answer? Make them! We used corn tortillas, cut them in to wedges and covered them with various (salt-free) spices and olive oil before throwing them in the oven and finishing them in a pan. Here's how they ended up:

Next up were the black beans, we bought the beans in a bag and never knew how long it took to make them. It wasn't super hard, but it did take 2 hours before we could eat them. Once they were ready, we paired them with rice and super spicy salsa below, I think next time, I'd just make the beans super spicy and eat them with Greg's chips.

Onto the next snacky food...French fries! These weren't hard, but it did feel good to make an "unhealthy food" healthier, we even found out the Heinz makes a salt-free ketchup and it tastes exactly the same! What a relief!

The end product turned out like the "house fries" we get at Mr. B's...big thanks to Jennifer for the awesome glass dish she got me last year for Christmas from IKEA!

This is all that was left!

Last, but certainly not least desert! Creme brule, it was a lot of little processes but I found a great recipe in the cookbook Matthew gave Greg and I that turned out really wonderful. To compliment it, we found a blueberry wine made right here in Michigan at the little grocery store I've become so fond of in Clarkston, Rudy's!

While I didn't have the correct dishes to bake them in, I remembered that the tea cups I have are actually stoneware and worked just as nicely. Here's the end product:

Overall, I have to say this was a successful and salt-free kitchen venture. I'll likely post these recipes to the blog Margaret started for our group of friends to share recipies on later.

More to come,

Nicole