Tell us all about your blog
I’m not much of a New Year’s Resolution maker, but this year I made one. My one and only resolution for 2012 was to prepare one new recipe a week for my family. Why? Well, I am Addicted to Recipes. Yes, you read that right. Addicted to recipes! For as long as I can remember, I have been collecting recipes, writing down my Mom’s recipes, tearing recipes out of magazines, and collecting cookbooks. Seriously…I may be a bit of a recipe hoarder. I have a big crazy binder full of recipes…so many that I have never tried. And yet we often found ourselves stumped about what to cook for dinner. Stuck in a rut, eating the same meals, over and over AND OVER. Well…opportunities presented themselves, I have been home on maternity leave for the last year, I made my new year’s resolution, and with that extra time at home I have been working on expanding our meal repertoire in hopes of breaking out of the rut and finding new go-to recipes and favorites for once I return to work.
My blog is all about the new recipes that I make (and I’ve consistently been trying TWO new recipes a week for 7 months now!) – I share a little story, the recipe, and our family’s verdict on the recipe. I try to choose recipes that are “made from scratch” and I get the recipes from my recipe binder, from my growing collection of cookbooks and online. I host a weekly recipe link party so that other bloggers can link up their recipes. I feature 5 recipes each week from the link party, I share the recipes on my blog, on my Facebook page, on Twitter and I pin the recipes to my Pinterest—helping to promote my fellow bloggers and feed my recipe addiction.
What inspired you to begin writing about food?
I decided to start blogging about food and my resolution because it made me accountable to myself. Blogging helps me track all my new recipes all in one place. You should see my recipe binder…it’s somewhat organized, but could still use some TLC As part of my resolution, I have been sorting through those recipes and finally trying many of them. Once I started blogging, I totally got hooked and wanted to learn “all things blog.” When I decide to do something, I’m one of those “jump in with two feet” types, and I want to learn as much as I can quickly. I started reading other blogs, linking up at parties, hosting link parties and have been having a blast learning all sorts of things that I would never had learned had I not jumped into blogging!
Writing my blog also coincided with another venture that I jumped into in January. A friend of mine was looking for a food blogger to write a monthly article and share recipes for her website, Okanagan4Kids. I signed up for the role, and have loved doing that too!
Describe your favorite food memory
I have two that immediately come to mind.
As a child, I loved watching my Mom’s chocolate chip cookies bake in the oven. Yes, just watching the cookies bake. Her chocolate chip cookies are my favorites (sorry, that recipe is a family secret!) and the anticipation of eating those fresh baked cookies with their melty, gooey chocolate chips was part of the fun. Those cookies are one of my comfort foods, to this day. It’s something that my oldest son does now—just like me—he sits on a stool in front of the oven, with the oven light on, and just watches them bake!
My other favorite food memory goes back to a camping trip with my Grandparents when I was around 8 years old. It was a rainy afternoon so my Grandma and I decided to go in the trailer and bake some cinnamon buns. I loved watching my Grandma bake, her style of baking is “a little of this, a little of that”…together we made the dough, rolled it out, added in our cinnamon and brown sugar mixture, and went to bake them in the trailer’s oven. When we got to that point, we discovered that the oven that we thought was heating, was not…and after some tinkering around by Grandpa (who normally can fix anything), the oven was declared broken. We had two options, toss out all our hard work, or “bake” our cinnamon buns on the BBQ. Keep in mind, this was nearly 30 years ago and it was a camping “BBQ”, not one the fancy ones many of us have today. I don’t remember if it even had a lid. I do remember much careful watching and flipping and watching some more, and we finally had our BBQ’d cinnamon buns…which turned out to be a huge hit! I am pretty sure that my Grandpa ate 6 of them fresh off the grill!
Cook or bake-which one? Either, both, and why?
I am a baker at heart but now that I am a wife and mom, cooking has moved to the forefront. I do love to bake and I love to share my baking. I host an annual Christmas baking exchange with a group of ladies that I look forward to each year. I love searching for a new recipe, testing it out, and mass-producing it for the exchange. And I love to see what the other ladies share! However, as much as I would love to bake all the time, I can’t feed sweets to my children all the time. I’m actually pretty strict in terms of the sweets and treats that they are exposed to (which given my sweet tooth, I think is impressive…or maybe I am just saving all the sweets for myself!). I have gained a greater appreciation of cooking over the last few years, and am more aware of WHAT we are eating. I’m trying to make sure we eat well and trying to instill good eating habits and teach good food choices to our children. My sweet husband even built a VERY pregnant me a garden last year so that we could start growing some of our own food.
What is the best thing you've ever eaten? Where did you eat it?
This is a though question! I have had so many wonderful meals and desserts, but the first meal that comes to mind was from Thai Sa-on located on 10th Ave SW in Calgary. We went there for dinner with a large group 6-7 years ago, and it was the best dinner that I have ever had. I don’t remember what we ate that night, I just remember that every plate of food that was served to us was delicious.
Share a favorite recipe
I have so many favorite recipes, both old and new. This makes me happy as it means that my resolution is working! We now have some fantastic meals and treats in our menu plan, including Sweet & Spicy Baby Back Ribs, German Apple Cake, and Kung Pao Pork. But one of the meals that we often struggle with is breakfast. Our oldest son is not a cereal kid, which is fine with me, but it means having to be a bit more creative when it comes to breakfast. If he could have his way, he would rotate between pancakes, waffles and French toast every single day. So I search out breakfast options. I’ve found some neat ones, like Baked Egg Cups and Strawberry Cream Crepes, but our favorite breakfast recipe that we discovered this year, and is thoroughly enjoyed by our whole family, is Blueberry Buttermilk Breakfast Cake. It’s a real treat!
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