NEW COOKBOOK!!!!!!!

Thanks to my wonderful grandma I got a new fantastic cookbook for Christmas! This is the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and it's very nice. It's got great information for people just starting out, like ME that may  need a little extra help along the way. Also, it contains some much more traditional recipes than Rachel Ray called for. I had my good friends Scott and Liz over for dinner to kick off my first recipe from my new cookbook. Liz chose the recipe so all I had to do was execute it, sounds easy enough right!
Well let me start off with before dinner... I worked that morning, which means off by 3pm so a 6:30 dinner time should have allowed me plenty of time for trial and error! Should have. Well work had a sale going on and had some supposedly great shoes and I was in desperate need of new shoes so I went to check it out. I found some that I really liked and of course they didn't have my size but they have a store about 3 mins from the hospital so Tasha and I headed there after work...no luck. They did tell me, well actually the lady wouldn't make the call for me because she figured that the St. Matthews store would be too busy to call at that moment but when we left I called and they answered right away and informed me that they had the shoe I wanted in my size! So Tasha and I thought we'd have plenty of time to run over there, which the GPS estimated at 12 minutes away. What I forgot is that Tasha and I are cursed when it comes to crossing the bridge! Without fail we always end up in crazy traffic jams and this day was no exception. Of course there was a wreck on the bridge and we were at a point where there was no turning around and just sat for about an hour without moving an inch. This state cop was trying to work his way through the traffic and boy was he mean! He was yelling at people with his megaphone thingy and not being very kind! But we did finally make it across and I got the shoes that are supposed to be so great for your feet! This is obviously a side tangent, and a long one at that but let me finish with I wore the shoes, the 138 dollar shoes and my feet hurt so bad afterwords that I could barely stand! I'm gonna give them some time because you can't take them back and they were too expensive not to wear so I'll try to update you about those later too.
Anyway, on to the cooking part! Well by the time I got home I was afraid I was going to be behind! Fortunately Scott and Liz are so nice that I knew not to panic. Of course, they did happen to come through the door right at the time I was having a crisis! The dish I made was penne pasta, with a creamy herbed sauce and I added broccoli and chicken to the dish. My sauces have usually turned out ok but they are still tricky sometimes because you need the right heat to get the right consistency. It said to heat basil and garlic on high for 30 seconds, well news flash after 30 seconds the burner isn't just automatically low heat instead of high even if you turn it down so needless to say the basil and garlic were burning like crazy and smelling bad! Not that I'm familiar with this substance but the burning basil reminded me of the smell of pot which freaked me out because I was having the worship leader and his wife over, and they let me watch their children and I didn't want them thinking that smell was me!!!! hahaha jk Anyway, the main base of the sauce was cream cheese so of course I added the cream cheese right before I realized everything was burning!!!!!!!! So I was in a panic trying to get the smoke and smell of pot to go away, and the creams cheese out before it burned.
And this is the exact time the Lee's got to my house...I'm sure they were really excited to eat now! haha
I managed to save the cream cheese and start over with the basil and garlic. The sauce turned out, although I thought the cheese taste was a little strong. It also contained cottage cheese. I love cheese (not cottage cheese though) but the sauce was kinda weird to me. Liz, if you're reading this is news to you but: the day after the recipe my mom asked me where the leftover cream cheese was. I said, there wasn't any left over the recipe called for the 8 oz package...my mom said, uhh the recipe called for half the 8 oz package! hahah so maybe that was why it tasted too cheesy to me! It probably didn't make a huge difference but it could have just tipped it over the edge for me. Anyway, I liked it much better than I liked any of my previous Rachel Ray dishes. Scott and Liz both said they liked it although I don't think they would have told me if they didn't so don't put too much weight on their responses. :)

But, best part: I did get to wear my new apron from Italy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(This pic is not from this night, it is from Italy but it's my new apron with my name on it! :)