Picture a Day - Day 329

The path to adulthood is paved by not just the large cobblestones of life: graduation, first job, marriage, home ownership, going to bed by 10:30. Mixed in are all those tiny stepping stones to get you from one large point to another, or lead you off to the hose so you can wash all the bird poop off your "first job" stone.

The first time you fix a toilet on your own, when you realize that cleaning something up sooner instead of later means less work, summer is just the same ol days but with more A/C. Little things like that.

Yesterday I got one of my first of those really little pebbles of adulthood. Because we actually have a Home and a Garden it only makes sense to subscribe to magazines about how to make it better (well in theory. In practice I'd need a magazine actually called Adequate Homes & Gardens: How to make sure Girl Scouts don't get entangled in your plant life).
What are some of your favorite adult magazines? Anything with some good recipes in it?

I also had another adult moment last night where I managed to create something for dinner relying on what I'd learned from previous cooking endeavours and no recipe to work off.

I wanted to make an easy pot pie using those Pillsbury dinner roles for the crust only we didn't have any chicken. So I shifted the paradigm a bit, and became pro-active (think my fancy shmancy words will get me noticed by big time Hollywood execs? Yeah didn't think so) with my food choices.

We may have not had chicken but we did have some cheapish chuck steak thawed and ready to be turned into something other than the shoe leather it really is.

I cubed that and browned it up while my husband chopped up carrots and mushrooms. Once the shoe leather was an edible brown I dug through the cupboards trying to find a soup concentrate that would work with beef.

Golden Mushroom, made with a beef bullion base. I thought I'd scored but once I opened the can and tasted it a bit visions of a take out dinner danced through my head. It looked kinda like canned pumpkin and sort of tasted like it as well. This stuff was going to need a lot of work.

In it went into the pot with the meat and veg, and while I stirred with one hand I globbed in spoonfuls of sour cream pausing every now and again to taste it.

The sour cream was helping but there was something still off about the whole thing.

Then it hit me. Beef Bullion. I added a half a cup to the sauce mixture and suddenly like magic it took on this robust beefy and oh so gooey stick to your bones flavor.

In that went into a dish, covered the top with the biscuits and sat in my 400 oven for 20 minutes or so.
My husband loved it so much he all but licked his plate, and my plate and the serving spoon.

The bottom of the biscuits stayed a bit gooey but that made loping up the sauce with them that much easier.

This may be my best happy food mistake so far. Now I can make beef pot pie when the mood strikes (it's a bit more belly pleasing than the chicken pot pie version to me) and I mostly came up with it all on my little own.

Are you more of a follow the recipe to the letter type of person or do you use it more as a guideline and then try throwing your own spin on something?

Anyone else ever had a major accident/I have no idea what I'm doing wind up turning into something amazing in the kitchen?

What little cobblestone comes after "I figured out how to cook my own dishes?" Ooh I hope it's heat vision. That'd make cooking go a lot faster than the electric stove.

Adults have super powers right? Otherwise what's the point of growing up.