Starting back in 2010 we discovered we really enjoyed watching cooking shows.  The first shows we got into were Masterchef and Hell's Kitchen, both Gordon Ramsay reality TV shows.  We never really liked the lame drama associated with the shows, like competitors screaming at each other over a burnt piece of salmon, but we enjoyed watching what the home cooks and chefs could do with food.  We would try our hand at different things trying to improve our cooking, but never really got much traction.  Recently we began watching Chopped, and found we enjoyed that one as well as it was focused pirmarily on the chefs cooking skills as opposed to the drama surrounding winning a competition.  I've always really loved cooking, and when we started watching these shows I became excited to try different recipes and make restaurant-quality meals in my own kitchen.  Even though I was excited to cook, I still didn't really know how and we ended up with as many nasty meals as we did delicious meals.  The breakthrough for us came when we discovered Chef John of foodwishes.com.  Foodwishes.com is by far the best cooking site I've found on the internet, as Chef John is a cooking expert with years of experience in both high end restaurants and teaching in culinary schools, yet he simplifies meals and recipes to a point where everyday people like me can make absolutely delicious food.  Some of the delicious things we've made so far include pumpkin scones, cabbage rolls, biscuits and country gravy, baby back ribs, creamy mushroom meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, ham and potato soup, mashed potatoes, and others that I can't remember.  It's definitely been the most delicious cooking I've ever done, and I've also learned a lot about cooking technique as I've gone through his recipes and videos.  We have long lists of the recipes we'd still like to try, and we're super excited to improve our cooking skills as we make this delicious food! (Mike wrote this previous section, from this point on it's Chantale again)

If any of you want an easy and fairly inexpensive meal then try the creamy mushroom meatloaf we made today.  I couldn't find any shiitake mushrooms at the store, so I just substituted regular white mushrooms and it still turned out great.  Chef John doesn't provide a meatloaf recipe with his sauce, so I used the recipe for the buffalo meatloaf for an idea of what to do.  For some reason when I tried to saute the mushrooms and the onion to go inside the meatloaf, they ended up reeking of fish and I had to throw it out.  I attempted to saute a second onion and it also smelled like fish.  If anyone has any explanation for why that happened twice I would love to hear ideas, because I'm completely at a loss.  So after the catastrophe with the sauteing, I decided to leave out the mushrooms and onion, and just added a tsp of onion powder instead.  I upped the bread crumbs to a little over a cup to try and keep the texture balanced since it was missing the mushrooms and onion.  I left off the glaze and then used the creamy mushroom sauce to cook it in the oven and it turned out amazing!  

http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2012/01/creamy-mushroom-meatloaf-experiment-in.html

http://americanfood.about.com/od/meatloafmastery/r/bufmeatloaf.htm

Pumpkin scones
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2012/11/pumpkin-scones-with-toasted-pine-nuts.html

Winter Baby Back Ribs
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2011/01/you-want-your-baby-back-ribs-sure-just.html

 

Cabbage Rolls
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2012/09/lambage-rolls-lamb-rice-stuffed-cabbage.html
http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2007/03/stuffed-cabbage-rolls-la-aunt-angela.html

For the cabbage rolls I took what I liked from both of these recipes and then improvised a little bit.  I added curry powder along with the cumin and it turned out very nice.