My New Blog

I watched the movie Julie and Julia the other day. Unlike the character Julie was, I am not good at cooking. I have been able to get by for many years. And I've definitely come a long way from beating the cookie dough 200 times by hand (punching with my fists) as a child. Thanks for helping me get past that Mom!

I can make a few dishes really well. My family likes them, other people like them, and I can make them pretty much without looking at the recipe. The only problem is I don't really try new things very often. I don't know how to roast a whole chicken (gasp!). I don't like touching raw meat. I have no idea what certain herbs/spices/ingredients are, and I know I won't go out on a limb to improve my culinary abilities without a little accountability.

So I decided to make a blog dedicated to the fun. I am not looking for fame and fortune through this blog. I just hope it will be fun for the kids to look back on someday because they are going to be a major part of the adventure. I'm going to assign different nights of the week for each kid to help in the kitchen. We'll take a lot of pictures too. Hopefully it will be a lot of fun.

I've already made a few new recipes, Kaiah made some french bread pretty much unassisted. And Mason took a recipe that I usually make and added a "secret" ingredient so he could call it "Mason's Taco Soup." Yesterday they said, "What new thing are we going to make today?" I had to break it to them that I can't handle doing something new and wonderful every day but that we are going to start cooking with ingredients we have never heard of or ones that I don't know what in the world to do with more often.

So the goals are:

• To include the kids in meal creations.
• To cook with fresh, healthy ingredients that we have never heard of or used before.
• To use more herbs and spices.
• To become more comfortable making a wider variety of dishes. 
• To include the carbohydrate counts, calorie counts and recipes from everything new we try.
• To have whoever eats a new recipe rate it on a scale of 1-10.
• To have a lot of fun!

While looking through a couple of cookbooks, I found it interesting how many things I had never heard of. God has created so many wonderful fruits and veggies, herbs/spices and roots and I'm sure we'll be marveling at the many possible uses of his creation for all eternity.

I'm still tweaking the format and some of the coloring and gadgets, but at least it's functional. So if you want to check it out here is the link... just try not to laugh too hard. :)