Thursday, January 22, 2009

Back Story

About a year ago I was introduced to the world of blogging by a friend. She knew I loved to cook and craft and she asked, "do you read any of the food or craft blogs that are out there?" I had no clue that fun blogs (or, at least blogs that I would consider fun) existed. I thought that the only people who blogged were financial analysts and computer programmers (no offense). Then, my whole world changed. It started with Alicia Paulson's Posy Gets Cozy (http://rosylittlethings.typepad.com/), and from there it snowballed. I don't even want to share how many blogs I follow on a daily basis. It's embarassing.

To be completely honest, I've been prepping for this blog for the past year. I've been taking photos of various culinary endeavours with the hope that maybe (just maybe) you'll be entertained by what I'm cooking and baking.

Here are a couple of photos I've taken over the past year:
Every year I go to the Farmer's Market in August and buy HUGE bundles of basil for making pesto. Why August? The bundles are HUGE, the leaves are HUGE (just look at the size comparison above), and they are CHEAP!!! I bought each of my bundles for a dollar a piece. With just five bundles, I was able to make more than a dozen batches of pesto. If you've ever paid for store bought pesto, you know what a steal this is.

This fall I decided to try my hand at canning. I'd been meaning to do it for years, but canning had always seemed so daunting. I was intimidated by the time commitment, the chance that the jars wouldn't seal, and that I'd poison my friends with botulism. But then, I got to thinking, "my grandma did this- most likely with a child on each hip, distracted, and NOTHING ever happened..." And so I canned. Like a fiend. I canned 24 quarts of pie apples (delicious in pies, on pancakes, ice cream, straight out of the jar). I also canned 12 pints of pumpkin butter (which I ran out of less than a month after I canned them- they were a hit!). I'm proud to say that EVERY jar sealed, and no one has died of botulism (yet).
The picture above is of a dark chocolate layer cake with mint chocolate ganache. My husband's family knows how much I love baking so they often ask me to bring the dessert at family functions. Last year for Christmas, my sister-in-law gave me "Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook". Flipping through the pages, Jeremy's uncle Ardy all but begged that I would make this cake for a family function. So I did. It was delicious. How can anything with chocolate ganache not be amazing?

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