Tender Mercies

What would you create with these seemingly random ingredients?  I felt like I had gotten into a rut. Food wasn't exciting anymore and I felt like I just was barley keeping up with putting food on the table and making sure my husband had his lunch and snacks and breakfast for the day. My baby girl has been going through a sleep regression of sorts and so I haven't been feeling 100% either.  Enter my very sweet and thoughtful friend.  She understands me and knows of my real love for cooking. I don't know if she realized I had gotten into a rut or if she just has some intuition that led her to give me a challenge. When I returned home from a weekend trip to the East Coast, I  had several ingredients on my counter with some specific instructions.  Jen- - Noting cold -Both need to be pan cooked, grilled, or oven #1 One meal consist of:  Anise seed/flower buds Hershey bar tea bag cashews #2: 1 bottle saffron 1 bag semoli...

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”- Theodore Roosevelt How often do we tell our children or the younger generation, "You can do it!" "Believe in yourself!" or "Don't be afraid of failure"? But then why are we so quick to be our worst ...

Last year I promised myself that I would enter a dish into the Naturally Nutritious Cooking Contest at our county fair. When it rolled around this year I knew I wasn't going to be able to get out of it due to my own stubbornness.  I've never entered a cooking contest, and while this one in particular doesn't have a ton of competition, my food was still going to be critiqued. I wasn't sure I was ready for that! I had decided to make my Indian butter chicken recipe with rice, and decided to make some naan to go along with it because naan is just plain delicious. If I had been planning better, I would have snapped a picture of my finished product, but this just goes to show how nervous I truly was.   My sweet husband was so great during the competition. He helped me carry the food to the entry table and tried to distract me by walking with me around the fair while the judges did their tasting (seriously the longest hour ever), but I was kind of a mess! I would...

It is so joyful that my love for cooking runs deep. Deeper than an eating disorder of my past. For a while I was nervous about whether or not I truly loved to cook or if it stemmed from my need to control everything that I ate during my late teens and early twenties--for this is a common facet to eating disorders. But, much to my relief, I found this "cover page" to an old composition notebook I had made when I was 11, intended to fill with my favorite recipes. The date was September 10th, 2001, far before I went through my struggle with orthorexia.  So now I know I can say that I love cooking, for I proclaimed it in that simple notebook 15 years ago. I'm no Martha Stewart, but who cares? The joy that comes from making a successful batch of homemade tortillas after completely messing up a loaf of bread the day before from over-kneading is exactly what I need to keep trying the next day. I've had a lot of failures, but even more successes.  I remembe...

It's a common phrase for women to ask their friends, "what can I do to help?" The usual response to this inquiry is something along the lines of, "oh I'm doing alright, you don't need to help with anything," and then both parties go back to whatever they were doing in their day.   But yesterday I asked for help from my lovely friend (who also happens to be my visiting teacher*). It had been a rough day for me and I didn't have all the motivation or energy to make dinner all by myself, and I knew that If I asked her to help me make dinner when she stopped by for a scheduled visit, she would be willing and we could talk and laugh and get dinner into the oven in half the time it would have taken me to do it alone.  My happy face after a delicious dinner was made by the help of a friend.  I had so much fun spending time in the kitchen with her, cutting eggplant and garlic, whisking eggs, and simmering a fresh pot of tomato sauce on the...

The husband leaves the house every day between 5:30 and 6:30 AM and does not return home until 12-14 hours later. He doesn't have time nor does he make the time to cook up something adequate, and even if he did, he'd be hungry again at 9. If  he ate his lunch then, it would be hard to make it through until dinner. So I devised a plan. On the Saturday or Sunday before the school week begins, I make a big batch of something yummy, and then I divide it up between 5 containers and that's what he takes all week long. I mix it up week to week so he doesn't get bored. Before he leaves the house, he usually has a bowl of homemade granola (see recipe at the end of this post) or homemade  cereal with fresh raw milk to tie him over until brunch when he has time to eat again. A Few Notes: I tend to use the "2 eggs per day" formula when I boil eggs or make the frittata or breakfast burrito filling.  I often don't use a recipe when it comes to the egg dishes.....

This was my first Thanksgiving that I hosted, which meant that I cooked the turkey. It kind of seems like a promotion in the kitchen or something. I've only cooked one other turkey in my entire life and that was only for my husband and I so the stakes were not high. This year, however, we invited friends over, so the stakes were a teensy bit higher, though not really because they are practically like family. Most Thanksgivings include lots of travel, cooking, family, noise, and commotion, and near accidents as well as love, laughter, and memories. We just were not feeling up to that this year, so we opted out of traveling and crowds and stayed home, sharing dinner with some close friends. Except for the near accident part. Everything was going well with the turkey. It was dressed and seasoned and in the roasting pan. After it had only been in the oven for 2 minutes we started to see smoke and then the three smoke alarms in our apartment started to go off, including the main ala...

The back of our Subaru was heavy with home-canned green beans, pasta sauces, and meats, rice, wheat, dried potatoes, raw honey, plenty of spices, and an entire ice chest full of frozen goods. My mother and grandma-in-law had sent us home with food to last us quite some time.  When I was young, I remember hearing stories from my parents when they were in college and first married, not having enough income to buy each other Christmas presents. Their cupboards were pretty scarce, yet they were able to make due by focusing on the importance things in life.  Fast forward 21 years later to 2012. As a newly married lady with my husband working full time in the Army and myself working part time as a skating coach, we fared well. There was always money to do what we wanted while also saving for the future. I had not yet experienced that feeling of living paycheck to paycheck.  4 years later we have found ourselves in a different scenario. We are both back in school w...