March 11, 2010

From Scratch...


It is a beautiful Thursday! It is feeling more and more like Spring everyday... And I am absolutely LOVING it! I am looking forward to MONDAY, when I am starting to plant some of my seeds indoors! YAY! I am SO pumped...

Another thing that pumps me up, is baking from scratch. Well, I will take that a step further and say it pumps me up when I make something SUCCESSFULLY from scratch! Can I get an AMEN!?

This week was a week of quick meals and LOTS going on each day (and night). Which reminds me of a MUST DO if you are wanting to make more from scratch. You need to have a MEAL PLAN! I have been planning my meals out for the month. Which will help with your weekly shopping, and it will help with the prep time of each meal. If you see that the next night you have something with hamburger or chicken that is right now sitting frozen in your freezer, you can put that into your refrigerator to thaw the afternoon before. I have found that if I don't get that frozen item out and thawed before the desired meal time, I just skip it and try to do something easier. But usually something easy means something not as healthy. So each day check out your meal plan (mine is hanging on my fridge). If you are baking one day, is there something you can do to make another meal easier also? If I am baking bread, and I see on Friday we are eating tacos, I will also mix up the dough for tortillas, then make them that day also. That way when I AM in the kitchen, I keep busy, when I don't have time for the kitchen, most of my prep work has been already done!

So, this week, like I said was a busy week, so not a lot of baking, but here are a few things that I made this week:

Grandmother Bread (of course!). This week I made it with ground flax, and it turned out AWESOME. The texture was beautiful, the color was gorgeous. And it stayed very moist for the 3 days before both loaves were eaten. Actually, now that I think about it, I made 4 loaves of bread this week... They are so pretty!

We have done some simple salad meals this week, adding tuna or something simple to it.

We had pasta with garlic cheese bread (made from Grandmother bread!). And salad on the side... I need to learn to make salad dressing (oil and vinegar is just not gonna work with my family).

I made some delicious cookies... called Chocolate wafers. YUM-O! I need to learn to freeze half of the batch, cuz I am trying to polish them off all by myself... Darn you, yummy cookies!

Another great addition to a dinner is homemade french fries. I never knew how easy these were until I made them! I just cut up the potatoes (you can cut them up however you like to eat them), coat them in a little olive oil, toss them, season them with a bit of sea salt then throw them in the oven. I usually put them in a 450 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes. Turning them a time of 2 during that time. Delish!

That is about all this week... Now it's YOUR turn! WHAT DID YOU make from Scratch this week? Please share! You can share in the comments section or if you link up please feel free to take the banner above, or at least please mention "From Scratch..." in your post. Also, I want to encourage you to visit all of the blogs listed here today! It's always great to learn some new recipes that have worked well for others!

Let's hear it!


2 comments:

Mominin said...

I decided to join in this week! I made your tortillas this week - so easy and yummy!! Thanks for hosting this - I'm getting so many new recipe ideas.

Amy said...

My hubby and I love to make french fries as you mentioned. It's fun to try different seasonings on them.