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. :)