Eliza's Corner

Today was my birthday. I spent it quietly at home with Chris and our goofy furballs.  I watched a couple of movies, made homemade enchiladas (the secret to ours is the jalapeno green salsa that I add to the onions before I cook the meat), and pumpkin pie.

My mom told me and has mentioned in the past that I loved pumpkin pie when I was a little kid and had one for my birthday when I turned 2 or 3 until I was around other kids and then she said I decided I had to have a birthday cake. Always good to know I gave into peer pressure and had to be like the other kids at the tender young age of 4.

While reading and clearing out my google reader today I came across several posts that made me happy. This post about making yogurt (on my have-to-try list!)  at Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef because I think over the years I’ve tried a dozen crafts and never been that good at any of them but I found over this last year, especially in the last 6 months, that I really enjoy cooking and I enjoy it even more when it’s from scratch.  I couldn’t agree with her more about her thoughts on food and weight loss from April. She made me feel a lot better about not wanting to choose a certain way of eating but enjoy what I prepare and eat while not overdoing it.

Her first post also let me to a year long project entitled Charcutepalooza – The Year of Meat. I actually was really excited about this project because I already was planning on trying to make my own corned beef for St. Patricks Day this year and from the sounds of it this project and the book it’s based on would be a lot of fun and help me expand my DIY kitchen skills. Chris told me his birthday gift was going to be a pasta maker so it looks like I’ll be making meat and pasta this year.

January I went caffeine free and didn’t drink any coffee or soft drinks with caffeine for the entire month. I was extremely pleased I lasted that long. I had a Dr. Pepper this evening and really enjoyed it without craving it like I have in the past.

New month and New Challenges ahead.

This week I’m attempting homemade meatball sandwiches and homemade New England Clam chowder.

Both C and I spent most of the day relaxing. Translation: He watched football while I surfed the net, facebook, and cooked a little bit. Last year we really tried to move away from processed foods and eat more vegetables and meat and this year I hope we can continue to move towards a simpler way of eating while I improve my cooking from scratch skills.

I started today off with my first attempt at Alton Brown’s southern biscuits and sawmill gravy.

The biscuits were a little tough. I think I may have kneaded them a little to much and then I left them in the oven so they were burned some. Guess I’ll be trying them again this year and see if I get a better result especially since the gravy turned out so well. Creamy, wonderful, sausage gravy that would taste great over more then just biscuits.

I have black-eyed- pea soup in the crockpot for this year. I used CrockPot black-eyed pea soup over at A Year of Slow Cooking as a guide and soaked the beans last night and put them in the crockpot around noon and added some onion and minced garlic about 4 hours into cooking.  Half an hour before the beans were done  I added the sausage and jalapeno green sauce to the mix to give it a little kick since Chris likes his food with a little spice.

I’ve been away from my website for several years after having a long struggle with writer’s block and what I really wanted to write about throughout the year. Last year I found a lot of food blogs that I enjoyed reading so I in 2011 I hope to start posting about Chris and my attempts at eating less processed foods. I want to work on learning to cook from scratch starting with doing what I’m doing now and using recipes I find in cookbooks and other blogs. Over the course of this year I hope I can learn to create some of my own recipes for our family.

Since I’m trying to get back into the habit of blogging not all of my posts will be food based. I hope to introduce our four goofy cats, after the loss of two of our cats Chris and I have had since we first got married I never thought I’d be using that phrase once again, and our resident chowhound.

Happy New Year!

Between work, school, and feeling under the weather this past week I didn’t get around to trying the recipes I had on hand for the week to post to the site so until I get to that point there may be a few bites posts.

I’m looking forward to cooking a Spatchcock Chicken and saving the bones for homemade chicken stock!

I’d love to make a batch of these cupcakes to take to work with me for lunch.

Over the past 2 years I’ve bookmarked, sprung, and starred a lot of recipes that I wanted to try. These are a few of my favorites this week.

Peaches and Cream Muffins – The Wright Recipes

Pumpkin Puree and Pumpkin Chai – As the FireRaven Flies

Macaroni and Cheese – Makeunder My Life

Chicken Empanadas – Food for my Family

Cinnamon-apple sauce – Food, Flora, and Felines

Pumpkin Puree, Chicken pot pie, Chicken Chili, Carmel Corn – Annie’s Eats (love her blog..she has the most wonderful, delicious sounding recipes!!)

Food Network Magazine Recipes I’m tempted to try!

Pumpkin waffles – these sounded delicious.

Squash soup in Pumpkin bowls – I found out this year that I really do like butternut squash.