At least it all worked out...

So I got The Pioneer Woman's cookbook over the Christmas holidays and decided to have a dinner party.

I invited a bunch of girls from church and flipped through the book deciding on the menu. Though everything in the book looked amazing, I decided on Beef Tenderloin and Roasted Potatoes.


The Sunday before my Tuesday dinner, I head to the store with two friends to pick up the ingredients. I didn't make a list beforehand, so I looked up the recipes as quick as I could on my iphone. I made my quickie list and then we headed in to get the food.

We stroll through the store picking up a few things here and there and then I head to the meats. I'm checking out the meat and having a hard time finding the tenderloin. Finally, I spot it...and then I spot the price. I'm fairly new to the cooking scene, so I had no idea that beef tenderloin was about $15/lb!!! And the recipe called for 3-5 lbs! I love my friends, but not enough to go broke! So I spot another meat, it looks similar, the name has "tender" in it...it's red...it's in the beef section...surely it will work, right? Wrong.

I picked up chuck roast. You cannot cook chuck roast like you cook beef tenderloin. (I came to this conclusion after much Google research) So menu changed to pot roast, still in PW's cookbook.

Once I got home and realized I had to change the menu, I took a look at the potato recipe. Yep. Definitely was looking at the wrong recipe and got red potatoes instead of gold or russett. Awesome. This is going so well.

I decide to switch to the mashed potato recipe (disregarding the fact that it, too, calls for gold or russett potatoes).

So all in all, I had a complete change of menu, a few other things weren't working perfectly as well (needed dutch oven and had to use crock pot, had outbreak of allergies and had to take NyQuil before the party--you can imagine how lively I was), but overall I would say the result was fabulous! My girls came over and we had a great dinner! I absolutely love having people over and playing hostess...and I got to wear my new apron! Yay!

Below you can see my finished pot roast...it was quite tasty, if I do say so myself!