Cook Club: Week 1

As I was flipping through cookbooks, I found three recipes that I wanted to try in my Hunger Games Unofficial Cookbook that my sister got me for Christmas last year.  I have, as to date, only made one recipe out of the book (hash browns).  As with most of my cookbooks, there isn't anything I have against the book, I just tend not to think of it when I'm making food...besides, it's much easier to go to Supercook.com and enter in the ingredients you have on hand and it returns recipes using those ingredients.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of recipes I won't be using from the HGU cookbook because they require things like muskrat or consist entirely of a handful of pine needles and hot water.

The three recipes I chose to make from the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook are as follows:

Orange Muffins with Sweet Preserves
Mrs. Everdeen's Rabbit Stew
District 12 Drop Biscuits

Notes for Orange Muffins:
Not difficult to prepare - the toughest part is getting the butter melted.  It's not assertively orange flavored, but the muffins are very good - good crumb, easy to make.  Since I'm not prone to making preserves; in the future, I'll probably add some orange zest to bump up the flavor (or maybe a shot of Grand Marnier).  While the recipe says it only makes 12 muffins, it probably makes closer to 18 - I figured they probably didn't rise much since the recipe says that it makes 12 so I filled the tins to the top and now have a mess to clean in the oven.  Shawn says they taste like cornbread (they don't have any corn meal), but it probably has something to do with the 'struessal topping.'  Rating:  4/5

Orange Muffin with Clementine and Mimosa...because mimosas make everything better.

And then later in the day, I made the other two recipes...

Notes for Mrs. Everdeen's Rabbit Stew:
First thought - Rabbit tastes like chicken.  Good to know, next time I'll probably use chicken instead of paying for the rabbit.  Also, now I know that rabbit tastes like chicken so I'll eat it again in the future.  Second thought:  It made me cook this bacon, now what the hell am I supposed to do with it?  (the bacon is never mentioned again in the recipe directions after you cook it) (I ripped it into pieces and added it to the slow cooker).  Since we have a massive slow cooker, and I only had purchased two rabbit quarters, I added extra wine and water to get the cooker at least a quarter full.  The recipe only calls for a total of 1/4 cup wine and there are no other liquids.  Also, the rabbit was done in 4 hours instead of the recipe listed 6 (again, I think it's the fact that the cooker was only a quarter full).  We served the 'stew' with rice - it really is more like something you serve over rice or noodles as opposed to an actual stew. Rating 4/5

Notes for District 12 Drop Biscuits:
The biscuits were really good the night of, not so great as 'left overs'.  They probably would have been better as left overs if they had cheese in them.  I used my usual cookie scoop for portioning and the recipe made 18 biscuits instead of 12 (per recipe).  Made the biscuits (start to pulling out of the oven) in 20 minutes. Rating 3/5

Mrs. Everdeen's Rabbit Stew over white rice and District 12 Drop Biscuit.  I really need to work on not taking fuzzy photos...