the rachael ray 365: no repeats challenge

funnily enough, i was planning on blogging about this, but george got to it first. is it sad that things like menus have taken up such an important position in our lives? i, personally, don't think so. someone with an actual life might, but fuck 'em.

my sister got me rachael ray's 365: No Repeats cookbook for christmas. i didn't want to admit it to myself, mainly because i think rachael ray is supremely annoying (EVOO, anyone?), but i desperately wanted this cookbook. i've always bitched and moaned about trying to make a menu every week. it doesn't matter that i'm only cooking for myself, mind you. every week i make a fancy menu and follow it. before i lived with terry, i ate a bunch of shit like george foreman chicken breasts and frozen fish. but not anymore, oh no. now it's all about fancy foods and good cookware. without homework to worry about, i suppose, one has to focus one's energy somewhere.

so i sat down with this huge cookbook on christmas day and started flipping through it. even with rachael's cop-out "master recipe" concept, where she takes a master dish and then changes like two ingredients and--bam--it's supposedly a new recipe, there's just a ton of things in it. i had no idea where to start. so i decided to start at the beginning and work my way through.

always one to make a mountain out of a molehill, i've decided to call it the rachael ray 365: no repeats challenge. it means that i'm going through it, recipe by recipe, in order, only skipping the recipes that sound absolutely wretched to me. and trust me, there are a few that i just know i'm not going to like. "cheesy turkey chili mac" is one of them. since i'm only cooking one night this week, i only got ingredients to make "smoky (not smokey, as phong insists it should be spelled) turkey shepherd's pie." at two recipes a week this challenge could take years. but i'm doing it. it's like tiny-kitchen olympics. can i stand rachael ray for two or three years? we'll see.

i told hilary about the challenge and she said, "that sounds great, but as soon as amanda and i start getting fat we're going to have to give it up." i promised to use lean meats and only olive oil because we know that we girls have to maintain our figures.

rachael ray, your ass is grass.