Food, Glorious Food

Food is such an essential part of my life. I know that sounds absurd since all humans need food to survive, but for me it is more than just substance and fuel to keep my body running. I am overwhelmed with satisfaction and joy when I prepare something delicious for myself and the family. I love the chopping, measuring, mixing, pouring, baking, broiling, and sautéing… I love it all! Much like running and taking a bath, cooking is therapeutic to me. Most of the time, it calms my soul and relieves my restlessness.

I would not call myself a chef. I am a recipe follower. I barely ever stray from a recipe and up until four months ago if I didn’t have all of the ingredients for a certain recipe I would abandon it all together until that ingredient could be retrieved at the next trip to the grocery store. Lately, I have managed to overcome this by figuring out proper substitutes for the missing ingredients and forging ahead. I have always been frightened to experiment with my own creations because having something delicious and edible at the end of the process has always been so important to me. Failure was never an option.

Searching for new recipes is a thrill for me. Instead of reaching for a novel to read I would prefer to scour magazines and cookbooks to discover the next perfect meal. I am a subscriber to Cooking Light, Food Network Magazine, and Everyday with Rachel Ray. I am also obsessed with the magazine Clean Eating that I recently found on a magazine rack. I can get lost in Pinterest* for hours looking and pinning new recipes that will sit in the cue soon to grace the Vanderford table. Lately, healthy and low calorie meals have interested me the most. Now our grocery lists consist of chia seeds, spelt flour, almond milk, coconut oil, brown rice, etc. We always have fresh herbs on hand and lots of fresh vegetables. Bold flavors are more satisfying to me so recipes with a complex flavor profile are the most enticing. Weeknight meals shouldn’t take longer than thirty to forty minutes to prepare saving the multifaceted, longer cooking timed recipes for the weekend (except slow cooker recipes that I often do during the week for the times that I will be gone all day).

With thousands of recipes on hand it is unusual for my family to see a recipe make a second appearance. My husband, Shannon, has begged me to start a “favorites” list, but I am usually on to the next great find before our bellies have had a chance to digest our last meal. This is good news for my blog. Every week I will post recipe reviews of tried recipes that I have made for the family that would make it on our favorites list if I were to actually ever start one. These recipes will come from several different sources that I find in magazines, cookbooks, and on-line (there are so many talented food bloggers!). I will do the work of researching a recipe, producing it, trying it out on subjects (my family!), documenting anything that was discovered during the entire process and then sharing with you. 

I am so excited to start this section of my personal lifestyle blog (I'm not always just about fashion and beauty!) and I hope that you try and enjoy the recipes that interest you the most. To kick it off, here are two recipes that were prepared for the family this week that we loved.

Garlic Roasted Sausage with Winter Vegetables comes from The Lemon Bowl. I found it on Pinterest when searching for recipes that included Italian Sausages. The recipe is incredibly easy if you buy the pre-peeled and pre-cut butternut squash (I get mine at Costco). The cooking time is a bit long, but it is well worth the wait. If your family does not like heat cut the red chili flakes (red pepper flakes) in half or omit all together, but my family loved it spicy. I would suggest not mixing in the garlic cloves and leaving them piled together on the side so that they can be located easily. After it is cooked, the little caramelized cloves look like the cauliflower so if you do not like biting into a whole piece of garlic this is a little off putting. By keeping the cloves on the side you can scoop them out after the cooking time is finished and allow individuals to control the amount they get and how they want to use them. I liked to pop them out of their little skins and then mash them into the veggies. We do have a vegetarian in the family so after I mixed the veggies up and before laying the sausages on top I scooped a serving of the vegetable mixture into a separate container to cook on its own. Also for the vegetarian we cooked vegetarian patty sausages in a frying pan and then added it to her veggies after they were done cooking in the oven.

My twenty-four year old son loves salmon so I am constantly on the look out for new salmon recipes. Baked Lemon Salmon in Creamy Dill Sauce from Cooking Classy did not disappoint. The only thing I would change for our family is omitting the honey from the sauce, it is just a personal preference, but still enjoyed it with the honey. For sides, we had a green salad and brown rice. Where we live the best place to get salmon is Costco. This is a complete mystery to me since where we live was once considered a fishing town. I buy the full fillet so there was a lot of leftover salmon that I made into Salmon Cakes from Healthy Recipes a couple of days later for lunch and these were so delicious.

Photo Credit:  Recipe photos taken off of recipe website pages linked in post.
Veggie Photo - Max Straeten from MorgueFile

*Follow me on Pinterest for more recipe ideas.