New Year, New Start!

It’s a new year! Traditionally, this means a fresh new start for everyone to make this year a better one than the last. As last year was an utter shit-show for me. A number of friends and family that passed away, including my mother. I spent half of 2018 and 2019 taking care of her and her passing, while completely shattering, was also a complete relief. My stress level dropped by half and I’ve slowly been regaining my life back.

And as such, I’m finally getting back to the things I enjoy most in life – cooking and baking! I finally got a great camera to take pics and video too! I am going to start the year off with one of my favorites – my always requested Ginger Cookies in the next post.

I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I do!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had an awesome holiday season! I was very blessed this past xmas with a few great kitchen presents that I’ll be discussing in the coming week. Two new cookbooks, tools, and some inspiration!

I’m hoping this coming year sees a lot more fun recipes and pinterest attempts here. That’s my plan anyway! I have gotten much better about taking pictures and even my photography has improved over past attempts.

I am also going to be working on organizing my kitchen better. I have a very small galley kitchen, with minimal counter space. I’m trying to arrange things a little bit better to give myself more room and looking at a new light fixture, new faucet, and new curtains/shutters for the window. Thinking I may do a short video of what it looks like before and after. I’ve been in this house for six years now and have already made some changes. I HAD to change the color of the walls ASAP, so that got done first. 🙂

As I’ve never done a video, we’ll see how that turns out – LOL! I may even get an updated photo of myself on here at some point.

Bread – My Nemisis

Confession: I suck at making bread.

Well, I suck at making bread that requires yeast and rising. Regardless of how well I follow directions, do everything little trick I have found, I absolutely suck at getting a bread dough to rise properly. It’s infuriating!

The other day, I attempted to make a focaccia bread. Of course it didn’t rise at all, though I still went through all the steps and did cook it. Taste-wise, it was okay, just dense because of my failure. Yes, the yeast was fresh, had it in a warm spot to rise, etc. ARGH!

I WILL NOT LET THIS THING BEAT ME! I love bread – all types of bread. It’s my fourth favorite food. So I told the Man that he’s going to have to suffer through all my attempts to make bread. He just laughed at me and said he’d help me dispose of all my attempts. He’s such a trooper. 🙂

Updates!

I’m in the process of updating the site! It’s halfway to it’s new look! Once it’s completed, there will be new features – the recipes will be easily printable with a click of a button, along with a new button to add it to your own  BigOven account, which I highly recommend. It works on all platforms, all devices, and is fairly easy to use.

Now I’m really going to have to work at taking better pictures. LOL

Wow

Can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything. Good news, spent yesterday trying new recipes from Pinterest – not always the greatest place to find stuff, but at least one was pretty good after I altered it a bit. LOL

Will get those published in the next day or two.  I even remembered to take a picture or two!!

Nothing New

There have been no posts here in exactly one year.  Just when I thought things were going to give me more time, the Man and I started a business.  You can imagine the lack of time I’ve had for anything. I’m currently determined to post more, but this particular blog is going to have to wait a bit.

See, I broke my ankle at the end of May and had surgery to put in pins and plates to stabilize it.  I’m sitting here, not able to do much of anything, least of all spend time in the kitchen making anything. I cannot tell you how utterly frustrating it has been for me. For someone to go from full tilt, do all the things, to a full and complete stop?  Fuck my life.

Oh well, life moves on and I’m hoping to get a bit more active in the next few weeks. I will definitely be posting my recipe for Ambrosia, which I’m making for a cookout next Saturday. There’s a story there, which you’ll find out later.

 

MIA

Sorry I’ve been gone for a bit.  Things have been busy and while I’ve been cooking, I suck at remembering to take pictures and blog about it.  I usually remember when I’m shoveling into my mouth.  My bad.

Things will be turning around a bit more here soon.  Thanks to a lot of free cookbooks that Amazon offers for Kindle, I’ve got a shit ton of new recipes to try out and tweak – including vegan and gluten-free.  No, I’m NOT a vegan (give me bacon at every meal!) nor do I need anything gluten-free.  However, I have friends that are or do.  And believe it or not, I’ve actually tried some vegetarian and vegan dishes that I liked – and I’m not a veggie fan.  Also, gluten-free pancakes are pretty awesome – just sayin’.

So, keep an eye out.  I’ll be back to some sort of normalcy soon.  🙂

My Own Cooking Blog

Several friends have started theirs and since I’m now slowly learning to be a chef, I thought I’d just toss my hat into the cooking ring.  I’ve always loved cooking and eating.  There are things that I actively dislike (broccoli being one) but I still cook those things for the other people in my life.

I also love to bake and it shows on my waist line.  I’m always up for something new to try, because you never know where your next favorite dish or dessert will come from.