It's so easy when you know what you're doooo-in'...

It's so easy when you know hooo-ooow.

Today I signed up for The Fresh 20. It was $50 for a year of:

-seasonal grocery lists (with like, 20 Fresh items! get it??)

-recipes for 5 meals per week

-prep instructions to get ready ahead of time for quick weeknight cooking

I think they're really onto something... If the recipes are good, that is. I like their idea because: 1. It's only 5 meals per week, leaving time for leftovers, other meals made on a whim, and eating out without wasting food. 2. As I have discussed before, most of the work of providing healthy food goes into the planning!

At the very least it's a year's worth of recipes... 250 things that I get to learn how to make!

Real Food

I want to work my way toward this: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/.

I am inspired by this quote from "Cooking for Geeks":

Michael Pollan wrote in the New York Times (“Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” August 2, 2009): I asked [food-marketing researcher Harry Balzer] how, in an ideal world, Americans might begin to undo the damage that the modern diet of industrial preparedfood has done to our health. “Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want—just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”

So many Americans aren't able to achieve this because they never learned the skills and in the midst of their busy lives, they do not have the time to go back and change the way they get their food.

My long-term goal is to (almost) never eat anything that we do not cook ourselves. There are a lot of skills that I am working to develop to make this happen-- time management, planning, cooking, and maybe even delegation to my sweet husband.

But, baby steps, right? A while back I started making sure that we bought at least three types of fruit per week and made a point to eat them before they went bad. This week, to work toward healthier, more "real" food, I'm going to add a vegetable to each of our meals-- mainly by purchasing plain frozen veggies that will be easy to prepare.

Wilton Flowers and Cake Design Graduation!

Today's project: layered cake with basket weave on the sides, rope on the top, and royal icing daffodils, violets and leaves. :)

Shane wants to bring it to work, but I'm not so sure it's first-impression-of-my-wife's-baked-goods worthy. Especially because Shane's next shift at the hospital is Saturday, so this will be positively leftovers by then!

The Wilton buttercream is more of a lookin' icing than an eatin' icing, although the cake inside is a grade A yellow cake made from scratch. After these classes are over I'm on the search for the perfect buttercream recipe that's yummy and will also hold up under decorating pressure.

Birthday Cupcakes!!

Birthday bouquet for April and dinosaur sprinkles for Shane. Both are Martha Stewart Raspberry Cupcakes (white cake with delicious fresh raspberries mixed in) with very simple cream cheese frosting --2 cups powdered sugar and 2 8 oz. packages of cream cheese. (FYI don't try to make the frosting that Martha Stewart pairs with these cupcakes if you are a beginner. It is a difficult recipe!) I iced them with the cake icer tip from Wilton. The flowers are made from royal icing and I made them today in my flowers and cake design class. Enjoy with your eyes! Also making a cameo in these photos is my cupcake packaging, the cardboard cupcake box with a "from the kitchen of" sticker from Tiny Prints.

5 fish recipes every cook should know!!

3 and a half hours of learning to buy and cook fish. Let's do this!!