After opening the app, I'm immediately already overwhelmed by choices. I look for a difficulty setting to simplify the process, but there's nothing. I'll search by style instead.
Hmm, a "Labor Day" recipe categories. There I find the gem "Labor Day Mayonnaise Meat Salad" with pineapple and mayonnaise. But I don't think I'd like that. Let's try Mexican?
Instead I find more meat salads...
...And even more meat salads.
This sounds strange, but not as unappetizing as a meat salad.
I see I have more to worry about than just preparation time and difficulty, though — I have to make sure what I make is edible. Moving on!
Finally! Something doable and appetizing: the Tex Mex Olive Taco. It's not super sophisticated, and includes something called a cornichon (which, after some searching, I learn is a type of pickle). But after 20 minutes of meat salad madness, I'll take it.
To the grocery store! I couldn't find any pickles specifically labeled cornichons, so I went for regular pickles. Everything else was easy to find.
Oof. I've already run into a problem in Chef Watson's first step and working around it. I'm supposed to char the tortillas directly on the gas stove, but the tortillas are too small to grill. I heat them in a pan instead.
Next I whip up the eggs and cilantro. This recipe calls for a lot of cilantro.
Now I have to "saute chorizo sausage...breaking up with back of spoon." I try to mash the whole sausages into bits but don't want to risk having it fly out of the pan. Back to the cutting board.
I mix all the ingredients together. Though I've prematurely thrown in half of the cilantro, at this point I'm confident that this won't be a complete failure. The ingredients go well together, and it looks and smells appetizing.
This is not a nonstick pan. Of all my pans, this is probably the stickiest pan. My bad, Chef Watson.
The recipe only had 2 servings but since both my husband and I are starving, I decided to cook three tacos each (with adjusted quantities, of course).
I serve up and get ready to chow. The food looks and smells pretty good. But I'm starving by this point, so I suspect cat food would look amazing, too. I'm so hungry that I almost forget about the pickle and buttermilk toppings.
I chop up some regular pickles and drop it in the taco with a healthy smattering of buttermilk. Here goes nothing...
I pretty much inhale the first taco. By the second taco the novelty of the tangy pickles is gone. All in all, it wasn't a disastrous cooking experience, but I did spend 20 minutes looking for a recipe that I could eat and wouldn't take three hours to make. I'll try Chef Watson again. But for everyday meals, I'll stick to my quick-and-easy staple recipes.
