1 cup peas
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup chicken stock
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper

1. Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Whisk in flour, salt and pepper.
2. Add milk to the pan and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to a simmer and stir in chicken stock, mushrooms and peas.
4. Cook until mushrooms are peas are tender, about 5 minutes.

Makes 2 servings

1 pound beef liver, sliced
1/2 cup flour
1 medium onion, sliced
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3/4 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder

1. Combine flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder and coat liver.
2. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the liver and brown on both sides, about 6 minutes total.
3. Reduce heat to a simmer, add the onions and add 1/4 cup of the water. Cover.
4. Gradually add in the remaining water to form a gravy consistency while the liver cooks for about 30 minutes.

Makes 4 servings

Here's what I knew about liver before tonight: it smells bad when you cook it and nobody likes to eat it. I can't remember if I'd ever eaten liver before, but I've been willing to give it a(nother) try, knowing how many vitamins are packed into that little organ. I didn't do anything fancy, just Liver and Onions, and it's safe to say that it does, in fact, smell bad. It's also not particularly edible. The texture got me right away and I barely choked down the first couple of bites.

I devised a strategy where I made sure to have a mouthful of onions for each bite of liver and as long as I made many vertical chomps instead of proper chewing, things went down alright. This is hardly a delectable experience, but I did manage to eat what I put on my plate. The rest is now sitting in the garbage. I'm really disappointed that liver and I couldn't get along. Liver is less than a dollar a pound! I could potentially see it working in another dish where the pieces are smaller and the sauce is much richer. After all, I do like pate, so all hope is not lost yet.

I wasn't really sure what to pair with liver, so I made a simple country style dish of Mushrooms and Peas in Gravy. The gravy was made with chicken stock, so the dish is sort of like the guts of Chicken Pot Pie, only missing several other vegetables and a bunch of herbs. Since I used it all as fodder for getting liver into my stomach I can't say that it was all that enjoyable, but I imagine it'd be good with dumplings or something.