cooking from the box

Last night marked my first night of freedom after finally finishing my last paper and thus being done with the semester. I celebrated by heading to the kitchen, and making a dinner that was somewhat inspired by my cooking it the 1950s research paper. We'll call it "cooking from the box" night. By that I mean that I looked up some recipes to make the things I was planning on cooking, and ended up ditching the recipes to follow instructions on the food boxes instead. I made a pork roast and seasoned it with salt, pepper, garlic, rosemary, and thyme. It smelled so good when it was cooking, but it was three pounds, so it took forever to cook. It wasn't the end of the world though, in the end it was worth it, I just didn't take any pictures. To go with I made mashed cauliflower (similar to mashed potatoes) from a recipe I found on a jar. And we also had rosemary steamed broccoli, which needs no recipe because it is self explanatory and it something that Ritchie gave me an idea for once. It is a great way to cook broccoli. There was also applesauce, which goes great with pork. I didn't take any pictures of dinner because I was too busy eating it.
For dessert I made oatmeal raisin cookies following the recipe from the Quaker oats container. I added a little nutmeg, some tiny pecan bits, and used a mix of baking raisins and golden raisins. I loved the flavor of the cookies, and overall they were good, but it was a little dry. I might try a different recipe next time to see if I can get a moister cookie out of the deal, but despite the dryness, they have been disappearing rather quickly thanks to Dad and Jon who like them a lot.

I also made coffee ice cream following a recipe that came with the ice cream maker (my final "from the box" thing) and it was quite good, but the pictures of that will come in the next post.