It is fun to allow a good dish to evolve.

I had a jug of frozen sofrito to use up, and I’ll tell you that I’ll never use store-bought sofrito again because it’s nothing but MSG, but god-damn, it’s good, so I threw it into a Crock-Pot with a can of mixed vegetables and a can of black beans. I also threw in some additional frozen mixed veggies for good measure. I boiled and seared a nice chorizo sausage (yes, this is a spicy one) and threw it in, chopping it up into pieces once it’d stewed a while, then I put some rice in the cooker. The stew poured on the rice was was very good. But it wasn’t delicious yet.

Last night saw the introduction of a half-pound of browned ground turkey, spiced with fresh ground pepper and a little salt, to the half of the mix that got gooshed up with the rice in the Ziploc container. And that improved matters. But it wasn’t delicious yet.

Tonight, the other half of the turkey was browned and spiced, the leftover rice/stew mixture and the other half just stew went in with it, and a cup and a half of macarooni was boiled and thrown in. And then it simmered a bit.

Dear gods.

Don’t give up on your kitchen frustration projects, friends. They can always turn into something perfect.