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.
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdThis 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 slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdNext 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).
next slide will load in 15 secondsSkip AdSkip AdI 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.