Cooking, Baking, Etc.

What are your favourite cookbooks? Whose recipes do you use? Do you just cook what you feel, or from things your mom or dad or grandparents taught you? Do you look up a lot of recipes on-line? When I first started cooking more after TJ and I got married, (before that I worked at a restaurant and ate mostly things with melted cheese on them for over a year) I came up with the weirdest concoctions. I had this attitude that I knew how to cook, when really I didn't. Then a bit later I started using cookbooks and following recipes. That helped! For me, I had to get a grasp of the basics before I could get creative, you know? And now, I still use mostly recipes, but can venture out now and again.

One of my all-time favourite cookbooks, as almost any friend of mine already knows, is More With Less, and I know it's a favourite of several of my friends, too. Lately I've been thinking a lot about eating cheaply, simply, and...just....healthier. Ugh. Although I know healthy doesn't always have to be....gross? Just jokes, actually, healthy is delicious! But I get on these unhealthy kicks, and they turn into ruts.....

On another note, I made crackers a while back....from an online recipe. They were good with cheeses, and would definitely be better if you spiced them up a little. The reason I like on-line recipes is because you can read the reviews, which really helps.

Oh, and I made use of free and cheap berries and made two blackberry chocolate pies, two triple berry pies, and a blackberry cobbler last week. I had one HECK of a time rolling out my crust, and I'm about to try a different recipe now! The one pie I sort of cut out of the picture (top left) was the ugliest pie I have ever made...it kind of looked like a crime scene. Anyways, we ate the cobbler and it was alright, and I froze the pies. I just have such a domestic twist in me, sometimes!