Becoming a homemaker

One thing I have loved about moving to Blackfoot is that I have time to cook and clean! To my family, this may seem like a major shock and contradiction, but seriously, it's awesome. I felt really bad that while we were in school this last semester, I hardly ever cooked. I either didn't know what to make, we didn't have the ingredients, or I was constantly doing homework and barely had time to eat, let alone cook. To top it off, our apartment was always a MESS. As soon as we got it cleaned up, it would all of a sudden become messy again. So, with all of that said, I love having time to keep our new place clean and to cook full meals for my husband.

With all the cooking though, I think I'm losing my faith in recipe blogs and/or online recipes. I found all these "healthy" recipes on familycircle.com and was so psyched to try some, so I went and stocked our fridge with all the ingredients. Well, I only tried two before I realized they were seriously gross. I was sad and had to quickly come up with ways to use the ingredients for the other recipes before the produce went bad. I did not want to waste time and calories making a yucky recipe. Then let's rewind back to last semester. I tried some recipes from a blog and I didn't like any of them. I could barely eat them, but the blogger just raved about them and made them look and sound so good.

I was about to give up on any and all online recipes. Then I turned to my Pioneer Woman cookbook that my wonderful aunt gave me at my bridal shower way back when. Sadly, this was the first time I used it...I was a little intimidated for some reason. I started looking through and was feeling much better about these recipes. I made a grocery list and went back to town and went shopping. Well, I tried the first recipe last night: meatloaf. Recipe here. It was SO good! I tried to cut a few calories by using extra lean turkey bacon and super lean beef. Mathew wasn't too psyched about the turkey bacon but he ate it and didn't hate it. I personally liked it. I also really liked using an actual cookbook instead of trying to protect my computer in the kitchen and awkwardly trying to touch the track pad to wake it back up without getting food on it. Yes, I'm definitely more of a cookbook fan. No more online recipes for me...unless they come from Pioneer Woman....or desserts from The Girl Who Ate Everything. On that note, if you want a super delicious dessert...go to that blog. They make my mouth water just looking at all of them. I've only tried a few, but they've all been good. Sometimes a little annoying because of all the weird (kind of unnecessary) prep steps. Oh that reminds me, I made her Strawberry Cheesecake cupcakes and a little word of advice if you also make them...use more butter in the crust, make about half the crust and frosting recipes, and embrace the sour cream/yogurt...it does amazing things to cake.