26. Cook something I've never cooked before

This past Saturday was my friend Jamie's 23rd birthday. Her husband is deployed with John so my friend Courtney and I thought that we should plan a surprise dinner/party for Jamie since he wasn't here to do anything special for her. Court and I planned that we would make dinner for Jamie at Jamie's house while her sister, Erin took her out for a bit.

The menu was:

Appetizers:
salsa (made by Court), guacamole & queso.
Dinner:
chicken fajita burrito
Dessert:
Frrrozen hot chocolate & mini brownies with raspberry filling

For those of you who know me pretty well, you know that I enjoy Mexican food so much so, that if you ask John, at least one weeknight dinner consists of one of my favorites --- either tacos or these fajitas. So, what on this list is something that I've never made before? QUESO. How did it turn out? At first, it wasn't so bad. It was nice and creamy. The flavoring was a little off, but it was something that I'd be able to tolerate and fix with a little added ingredients. So, for the night, I put in some hot sauce and some of Courtney's salsa and it was tolerable...Again, something I could fix the next time I made it... BUT, I took it off the stove and put it on the table and it very quickly turned into a big glob. So, as I got word that Jamie was approaching home, I put it back on the stove in order to reheat it and make it into the creamy goodness that it once was.. What happened? Instead of turning back into that creamy goodness, it turned into little things that reminded me a lot of couscous but as a whole, I will refer to it as the big blob of couscous.

I was pretty upset about this because the recipe I used had pretty good reviews. Usually with a new food recipe, I can look at it and tell if things are going to work well together or not. In this case, being unsure of queso, I followed the recipe pretty closely (besides my additions of salsa and hot sauce) and ended up with the big blob that looked like couscous. What did I learn from this? Two things. 1. I shouldn't trust a recipe. 2. I should always trust my cooking instinct. Needless to say, I wont use this recipe again. Although this recipe stunk, I will not give up on making queso dip. Within the next 11 months, I have made it my personal goal to perfect a queso dip in hopes that it will be as delicious as the queso from the Armadillo Grill back in good ol' NC.

If any of you have a good recipe for queso, pass it along! I'm in the market.