Cooking and Dabbling

Around here we (by we, I mean I) like to experiment with the cooking. There is no recipe that can't be tackled. I credit my love of cooking to two things.

1. My mother is an excellent cook. When I was on my mission, and now that I am in college, I find that no one cooks like Mom... The next best thing is a blood relative, and the closest blood relative living in my area is... ME! My Mom has taught me the principles of baking bread and slow-cooking big meals. It comes in handy. Now I can have food for the entire week!

2. I realized that I would probably be cooking all my life. I don't see that responsibility going away anytime soon, so I decided I might as well enjoy the cooking (and cleaning) in my life. Besides, I like the idea of taking turns cooking when I eventually get married.

Here is some granola I made. I have tried several variations of the recipe, and I am continually looking for new ideas.

Homemade strawberry jam. (it really isn't necessary to use "homemade". In my family jam just isn't jam unless it is homemade)

Croutons!! Now lest you think this was my great idea, I will tell you what really happened. I baked a batch of bread made from a starter, but I didn't let it rise enough. Then I didn't bake it long enough. The bread inside was still doughy. So I decided to make croutons. They actually turned out quite well as you can tell from my satisfied smile.

Here are the strawberries for the jam. I think I bought 10 cases... I ended up with over 20 quarts of jam. I can't remember the exact number because I gave a lot away to friends and family around that time. It may have been as much as 30 qts.

This is peach jam which I made more recently. I didn't have time to make the jam when the peaches were in season, so I peeled them and froze them. About 3 weeks ago, I took them out of the freezer and jammed them. :) 

Cream cheese brownies

Now that you are salivating from the visuals of all this good food, I will give you one of my favorite recipes that you can try for yourself!!

http://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/10533319/baked-potato-soup-crock-pot/?locale=en_US

I like to make a big crock pot of this stuff. It tastes great and it relatively affordable. 

You can also use sour cream or evaporated milk instead of cream cheese. When you puree the potatoes, it thickens up nicely. I have added a little cornstarch a couple of times as well.

I like to add the bacon a little before serving it. That way I don't have to worry about someone taking too much bacon, which is a very real possibility with college students. :)

Working with the Grounds...

An integral part of my time on campus is my job. I work with the site development sprinkler crew which is a division of BYU grounds. Since I was little I have learned how to work hard. I remember working with my family at my home, going to my grandparents' house to work on their farm, helping with service projects, and since I was 14, working a summer job.

I am really glad to have my job for a number of reasons.

1. I work with great people.

I work with a crew of students. We are all directed by a foreman, who is a full-time employee and usually not a student. In my case, my foreman is finishing up a masters degree in construction management. My foreman is very knowledgeable and safety minded. He is a whiz with sprinklers and he knows all about construction techniques. This comes in handy because the majority of our time is spent on large-scale installation or repair in or around construction sites. We aren't your ordinary sprinkler crew; we only handle the heavy duty lifting. :)

My fellow students are fun to work with as well. We enjoy reading the newspaper on Tuesdays and making comments about it. We spend long hours laying out systems in the summer, and cold mornings shoveling snow in the winter. Sometimes we have a barbecue potluck lunch. Other times we will race to fix a broken pipe that is gushing water all over a construction site.

2. I like the opportunity to learn.

I told you about my foreman, right? Well his name is Jared. He is a track hoe operator extraordinaire. I am not even joking in the slightest. Once he wrote his name in cursive with the tip of the track hoe bucket. He is an expert. So what do you do with an expert? That's easy, you learn from him. I like learning how to do things that I have never done before or on a bigger scale than to what I am accustomed. Here are some examples of our work.

Here is a plan for one of the systems we repaired.

Here is a system we put in after the construction crews came through. It is sometimes a brain teaser trying to fit everything in one space.

We also run wires to each sprinkler box, so that each system can be run automatically. It isn't nice to mix up the wires. That can provide several hours of fun trying to figure out where in the dozens of yards of underground conduit you might have messed up. 

3. I appreciate the flexible hours.

Since we work all the time (winter is slower usually, but this winter has been pretty good), our foreman lets us set our own schedule according to our classes and time. Super nice!! I don't think every part-time job will be so easy to work with.

4. I love the time to relax.

I find that physical work helps me take a break from my school and sometimes-stressful life. I enjoy working with straightforward tasks that come to fruition relatively quickly. 

5. I am grateful for the income.

As a college student money can be tight. How hard I work is directly correlated to the resources I obtain, just as much in work as through my scholarship.

Welcome to Provo, Hello!

Welcome to Provo

Hello! And welcome to Provo. Here are some picture of the wonderful Provo area. You may or may not be familiar with it, but I have come to consider it home.

As you can see I get to live in the middle of some fantastic mountains. There are beautiful scenes on all sides, not just the landscape, but the people are beautiful as well.

This picture on the right is a football game that I went to last fall. It was super fun!

The two photos above were taken from the tallest building on campus. It is know far and wide by the name "Swickett". Starting with that alphabet soup of federal agencies (TVA, CIA, FBI), we Americans are now adept at taking acronyms and making words out of them. Thus the Spencer W. Kimball Tower (SWKT), earned its name. Or as we like to joke on my sprinkler crew it is the Swickett tower. (SWKTT) Which is similar to another common mistake that more people are probably familiar with. The SSN number or the PIN number...