Exceedingly Mundane

I am trying to get back into a groove of trying new recipes. Sometimes, I feel like I cook the same things over and over. I do try to break out of my rut, eventually. 😀

I entered a few new recipes that I’ve made in the last couple of months in both my local recipe software (MacGourmet, that I bought last year for my new MacBook and just LOVE!), and also on the recipe section of our website (here). I’ve tried to be better about taking photos. It’s funny, because when I transferred photos, I had two distinct themes:

1. Food
2. Beau

(So expect a couple of Beau photos soon!) Anyway, here’s a few of the new things I have tried lately. I tried to give credit for where I had found them (I think these are all online), and hope I got them all correct. I tend to troll for recipes, print them out or file them, and not always cite where I found them. Ahem.

* A change on regular banana bread. This is more of a dessert, since it has chocolate inside and a great chocolate glaze on the outside. Banana Chocolate Walnut bread recipe here.

* One I made back earlier in the winter, for quick enchiladas in the crockpot. I have a recipe very similar to this that I do in the oven, which is also just basically black bean enchiladas. It was nice to do them in the afternoon and have them ready at suppertime, just having to fix some sides to go with them. Crockpot enchiladas here.

* A honey oat bread in my bread machine, here.

* A tangy, strong vinaigrette for a spinach salad – here.

* A copycat recipe for Bourbon chicken. It was good, but not quite like the Bourbon Chicken at our favorite local chinese restaurant.

I also went back and entered a few recipes for things that I have made for years, or haven’t made in years, that were on recipe cards and not in either of my software systems. One is my mom’s chili, which is just a guideline. No measurements, she didn’t measure much of anything! Another is for a “pantry cake”, a quick snack cake that doesn’t use eggs or butter. It doesn’t have a frosting so Tim does not like this one. What a shame, I had to eat almost the whole thing all.by.myself!

Chili recipe here

Chocolate Snack Cake recipe here

I am hoping to try a couple more in the next few weeks. If they turn out good, I’ll probably make another recipe post 🙂

P.S. Sorry for all the different sizes on the photos. I just didn’t feel like going back and making them all the same size. Sheer laziness, I tell ya! 🙂

Have a great day!

I’ve decided that my handwriting has slowly evolved over the years, and now it borders on…. atrocious. Yikes. I used to have really nice handwriting, in school and then college. I remember going to an orientation type day at the small private, Christian college I attended. The professor or office attendant looked at the form I was turning in, and she commented “You didn’t have to type this dear!”. And I was like, it’s not, that’s my handwriting 🙂

But, then I started work, with all men (first in electrical engineering and then in IT) — who do not really write very well or very legibly, as a general group. And I began working almost exclusively on computers. As the days and years rolled by, I used my hand and a pen and paper less and less to write things down. Post-it notes here, scribbles there, thank-you notes at birthdays and Christmas, but that was about it. And now, today, I’ve decided that my handwriting is truly truly bad. I mean, some days, I can barely read it myself!

What brought this on, you ask? (no, I know you didn’t ask that, but thought I’d throw a little lagniappe in). I’ve been watching the new cooking show “Mad Hungry” on Hallmark channel since it premiered last week. I don’t really enjoy Martha Stewart’s show, but I do like her food editor, Lucinda Scala Quinn. I’m really enjoying her new show, and have tried to look up several recipes online to save in my “to-try” file. But — a lot of the recipes are not online yet, as it’s a new show and new website. So, with my handy DVR, I thought to myself, I’ll just write them down!!! And now, I can barely read what I wrote. Hence, the blog post 😀

But not recipes for Spam!

A couple of random thoughts this morning:

1. I don’t understand people who leave spam on my little blog. I mean, it’s not a high traffic blog, nor does it have anything controversial or even overtly interesting on it. I’m SO grateful for Akismet though – the spam filter I installed a while back to catch all of this nasty spam. I’m constantly amazed and disgusted at the kinds of spam that Akismet catches. Ugh. At least it doesn’t get out there, but I hate seeing it all on my moderation page.

2. I’ve been trying to get back into a cooking groove. For a while now, I’ve just been making things that are easy, or things that I’ve made many times before. I’m making a concerted effort to try new things. Most of them have been winners, although some have been better than others. All of these are new to me, and all are from places online. I have tried to give credit from the website where I found the recipe, but sometimes I don’t always write it down or print it out. I have just entered several recipes on our family website, in the Recipes section. Here’s a sampling of them:

Sausage Calzones, with homemade dough – here

Pizza Pot Pie – here

Butter Honey Wheat Bread – here

Homemade Taco Sauce (here), which I used in this Skillet Taco recipe

I am going to try a new recipe today for a homemade spaghetti sauce. I’m on a kick lately to reduce sodium and cut down on the processed food I buy and use. So many additives in the canned stuff, packet mixes, etc, as well as that nasty high fructose corn syrup. I hope it turns out ok, because I sure do like using jarred spaghetti sauce, it’s so easy!

Some various, random and assorted items:

I go through phases of enjoying cooking, and loving cooking, and then some days, not so much. I love to eat, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t grow up learning how to cook. My mom didn’t teach me much, so I’ve learned slowly, over the years, through trial and error. My mother-in-law has taught me to make many things, including things that my husband likes and grew up with. I’m very blessed to have married a man who is not at all picky (a lot less than me), and who is willing to try most anything. There’s things that Tim does not like to eat and flavors he’s not fond of, but he’s always willing to try something once. That makes my job so much easier, and so much more enjoyable. I like trying new dishes, and I like making his favorites – it’s a win-win thing for me.

My love of cookbooks and recipes goes hand in hand with this whole line of blog-babble! 🙂 I love cookbooks and always have. I would have dozens more, except I ran out of room for them years ago. One day… one day, I’m going to have a lot more room for books and cookbooks! In the mean time, I “collect” recipes via the Internet, cooking blogs, message boards, forums and many, many favorite food and cooking websites. I print them out, I email them to myself, I bookmark them. I don’t have a great system for the ones I want to try. But, through the years, I have worked hard on a system for recipes that I have tried, and that we’ve liked.

Over a decade ago, I started using Mastercook. And when we talked about setting up our family website, the two main things I wanted were a place to share photos and a place to share recipes. The photos have migrated to other areas (mostly, Flickr and my local drive), but the recipes live on. We had an old recipe system on our website that I liked fairly well. Then… the spammers found it. And they started entering recipes that contained links to spam, and nudie pictures and drug sites and everything else unsavory under the sun. Sheesh, people, get a life! Some of us enjoy cooking and recipes, leave our recipe site alone!

So, my darling webmaster/guru husband installed a new, more secure system on our website a couple of months ago. He converted all 350+ recipes into the new system, those entered by myself, family and friends. I had to go into each recipe and edit it, but that is all done, and we’re now enjoying the new system. Our old system didn’t do photos, but the new one does, so I’ve been happily snapping photos of the food I cook, to add to our recipe database! And, having the new system has also spurred me into trying new recipes …. “so I can enter something on the new recipe system!”. Tim gets a kick out of just how much of a geek I can be on any given day!

Here’s a few pictures of the food I’ve been cooking lately:

And you can find our recipe system here. If you get a chance to visit, I hope you like what you see! 🙂