New Year - New Recipes

Happy New Year! I can't believe how fast 2010 went... seems like only a few months ago we were celebrating last New Year's Eve. Best part about the past year? Finding my passion for cooking! I always enjoyed cooking, but I was never as excited about it as I am now. Getting the Harvest Box really helped to spark that interest and I'm so excited for it to return in June!

I received a ton of great cooking related gifts for Christmas (a lot having to do with cookies - I think my coworkers will be happy about that too, or not - depending on their New Year's resolutions :-) ). But right now my new favorite thing is the Kitchen Aid stand mixer I just bought at Costco! I'm really excited about bread making - I tried my first loaf ever this past week and it went pretty well! It was definitely time consuming, although not really involved, I'll just have to keep that in mind for tomorrow when I try out some more recipes!

We ate half the loaf the first night with some Havarti cheese (I found vegetarian Havarti, yay!). It reminded me of working Saturdays in the bakery when lunch would be fresh rolls with Havarti cheese from the block that must have weighed 10 pounds in the back room. This was before I found out the cheese had rennet - saddest day ever. But all that is fixed now - I can have all the bread and Havarti I want!

Fresh Bread!

This week I will try to make a french bread to go with the stew we'll have on Tuesday (New Year's resolution: work on planning out meals for the week and reduce the number of grocery trips we make) and pizza dough for Pizza Friday (I don't think this planning will last long - but I might as well give it a shot).

On a non-bread related note, tonight I am attempting to make vegan fried fish. Weird, right? I thought it sounded interesting though and even though I wasn't really a fan of actual fish, I did have some vegan fried fish at a place in Portland once and it was amazing! Last I heard though, that place had turned into a vegan strip club (only in Portland), and so there will be no more delicious fake fish for me anymore. Fingers crossed this recipe turns out edible!

-C