Bologna and cheese whiz quesadilla, anyone?

Did anybody else watch the premier of Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America last night? I did, and maybe I’m a little late for this {it was the second season premier, after all}, but I think I might be addicted, even after only one episode. If you’ve never heard of it, they basically find a group horrible cooks, and put them through cooking bootcamp. At the beginning of the show, they were asked to make one dish of their own. Some of my favorites? Bologna and cheese whiz quesadilla, cayenne pepper crusted chicken {with yes, just cayenne pepper and no oil in the pan}, and chicken with maraschino cherries.

Once the contestants made their terrible dishes, the hosts, chef Anne Burrell and chef Robert Irvine split up the cooks between the two of them {they choose the team members for the opposite team} and taught them how to make a dish. The cooks then had to replicate the dish and present it to the chefs.

Now, I did have a few issues with this first episode. First, both teams had to butcher a whole chicken. I’ve never even butchered chicken. It seems like a slightly difficult first task, especially when they only showed them how to do it once and were then so critical {but hey, I guess it is supposed to be entertaining TV}. Second, the dishes that the teams were asked to replicate seemed slightly unequal in difficulty. Chef Anne had her team make chicken cacciatore, while Chef Robert taught his team to make a pan-seared chicken breast with herb jus and potato-vegetable hash. Just the name of Chef Robert’s dish seems complicated.

{Recipes can be found by clicking here and here}

Anyway, it was interesting to see how badly these cooks could screw up the food that they were taught to make only minutes before. I feel like I might eventually get annoyed, though. I mean seriously, it's not that difficult people. But I'll keep watching. Because it's like a train wreck.

Today is apparently a cooking post kind of day {unintentional} because I feel the need to talk about the dinner I made last night. We had sauteed sweet potatoes, cauliflower mash with cheese, and bacon wrapped meatloaf.

Yup, bacon wrapped meatloaf. It was delicious. And you can find the recipe on The Pioneer Woman website.

I feel like today is going to be a really long day, so this might not be the last you hear from me. It’s my first day back at work after my wonderfully long and relaxing vacation. I ate so much good food {brioche French toast with vanilla caramel syrup from Café Nouveau yesterday} and watched so many movies. And slept. A lot. It was difficult to wake up this morning. But luckily I got a gift card to Starbucks for Christmas, so that was my first stop this morning.

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful day, and I'm sure I'll be talking to you {again} later.



Much love,