Canning part 2: Electric Boogaloo

I absolutely love bread. I could eat good bread all day and all night. I really shouldn't, but I could.

Good bread deserves a good topper. Sometimes it is cheese, other times I want something sweet. Fruit preserves are a big favorite of mine.

Growing up, my Grandpa had fruit trees that my Grandma often used to make jam. I still remember the plum jam she made, nothing store made matches my memory of course.

Adventures in Canning: Part 1

The last two days, my kitchen has been a small batch canning factory. I've done some canning before, last year it was tomatoes from the garden and blueberry preserves. This year, my tomatoes haven't been too plentiful and I haven't been able to find blueberries for the same low price I them for last year.

Instead, I have a ton of zucchini and found peaches on sale. And I have a fair amount of cucumbers this year as well.

Yesterday and today, I put all of the above into jars of some form and processed them to store up for the long winter ahead. Or not so long winter ahead, whatever.

Crockpot Carnitas

My friend Deanna recently had a beautiful baby girl and will soon be returning to work. She asked me yesterday if I had any crockpot recipes.

Yes, yes I do!

I used our Crockpot quite a bit while I was in school, it made us many a meal during my winter semester time.

Unfortunately, I found that in warmer months, I tend to put the Crockpot up and seemingly forget about it. Warm weather and Crockpot just haven't seemed to jive in my mind.

Deep fried goodness.

We moved into our house about 5 months after we were married.

As we planned, married, honeymooned, house hunted, packed and moved there was one thing my husband really wanted: A deep fryer.

And lo and behold, with a suggestion from his loving wife to her parents, for our first Christmas in our new home, he got one.

I would like to preface the following with this: We don't fry a lot.

This weekend, we had friends over for a game day/afternoon and we fried. We were plotting what could be fried. We ended up being to full to try deep frying pickles, but they were there. Next time.

Saturday morning pancakes

I've taken a bye week from Weight Watchers this week. My middle of the week was the suck and cookies and donut at work got me, so I decided to skip a weigh in and points counting this week. Which meant a Frosty at lunch today. It also meant pancakes for breakfast.

I had blueberries in the fridge which obviously necessitated making blueberry pancakes.

The internet gave me a recipe that I tinkered with to work with what I had in the fridge.

I am so far behind

At least in terms of updating here. I have been cooking, in fact I have a couple of recipes to get pulled together and posted. I tried out a couple of recipes that aren't quite ready for prime time posting just yet, I need to tweak them.

Here's what I have been working on:

Mark yesterday on the calender...

My husband willingly ate a portion of fish. More on that later.

Yesterday was a really productive day for me. Now that school is out and life is settling into a normal routine of me just working and not working, studying, going to clinicals, studying some more, etc. etc. I am getting projects done around the house.

One of them was cleaning and organizing the fridge, freezer and pantry. I finished up the fridge and freezer today, including these guys belonging to my husband. Have I ever mentioned my husband is a nerd? And plays miniature games? And as such paints them? Occasionally he also uses clay to alter them and leaves them in the fridge overnight to cure. And for me to find the next day when looking for the cottage cheese for breakfast.

An ode to goat cheese.

I love goat cheese. Creamy, delicious, goes well in sweet or savory dishes, it is just all around good stuff.

I also love quesadillas. Comes from living in a border city, I suppose. Cheese stuffed in a tortilla and cooked until melty and crispy? Yes please!

And even though I am technically dieting, you can only have my cheese when you take it from my cold, dead hands. It is one thing I refuse to give up.