Jam of the Week: “Snow Song” by The Mountain Goats

It sure is crazy how things get thrown out of order as soon as life gets busy. That ranges from delivering a column about all the exciting things I’m doing in the grip of winter to following through on new year’s resolutions.

If you recall, my new year’s resolution was to start cooking more as a hobby. I call it a hobby since I’ve cooked for a long time but my recipe base consisted of throwing things at ground beef and macaroni and cheese. It’s not necessarily a health related resolution, but I guess I am working to make some things that’s better for me than microwavable noodles.

Well, as my column fell by the wayside during the busy weeks of preparing our Progress inserts, so did my regular excursions to the grocery store to try and create new dishes. Since Progress has ended, I’ve hit the ground running. However, I hit the ground hard enough to fall on my face more than a few times.

Most of my recipes have been drawn from a book I received for Christmas. I have yet to dig through my friends’ Pinterest accounts to look for recipes since I’d probably try to live off all the tasty, terribly unhealthy desserts I see on those pages.

One of the first recipes I tried to make was what the book called one of the easiest and most versatile concoctions in the book. This simple five-minute drizzle sauce was said to work with many dishes, chicken, fish, rice and pasta. I decided to go with some pasta, and added some parsley to the mix.

I threw four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and heated it up. I later added a tablespoon of minced onion, 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, water and a bit of salt and pepper into a sauce pan. In the meantime, I heated up some pasta.

As I added the oil and water, I remembered that what I was adding was basically an idiom for things that don’t mix. Without trying to finish the recipe, I threw it out and started again when it, of course, didn’t seem to mix well.

A couple tries later, I almost gave up when the minced onions in the pan started popping and throwing flecks of hot oil across the kitchen. On the final try, I just decided to see how it would turn out, turned the heat down a bit, cut the onions a bit larger and turned out with a relatively nice and probably healthy sauce for my pasta and a bit of bread.

If I manage to live through more recipes, I’ll share them when they work out well or hilariously horribly in the future.