Hey, Good Lookin!

I'm not sure if I'm the only person who has gone through this.  I certainly don't presume to be, but I found myself going back to my old hobbies and loves.  For whatever reason, when I reached adulthood, I kind of put certain things aside.  Like old movies, I was always an old movie buff, ever since I was a teenager.  I went through an independent movie phase and then once Javy was born, a no movie phase (except the latest Pixar or Disney movie).  Now I'm returning to my original love of black and white flicks, even broadening my horizons into the 60's an 70's classics.

The same goes for cooking.  I started cooking when I was in my early teens when it was just me and mom, living in a tiny studio apartment in Manassas, VA.  I always had a warm meal waiting for her, after her two hour commute home.  I used to love making grand, over the top meals for the rest of my family, served on the best china, of course.  I lost interest somewhere in my twenties, only busting out anything experimental, occasionally.  

Over the last year, I've returned to this passion.  I started baking Javy's snacks for school, instead of buying the variety packs from Costco.  I even began baking our own breads and I've experimented, a little, with homemade cakes.  Honestly, this was a little bit out of necessity.  One big bag of flour is about $8 at Costco.  I'm only on my second bag, since September 2012.  Also, it's really not that hard to bake homemade cookies and I can control what I put in them.  I don't put all those unknown things that you read on the ingredients list of a pack of cookies.  

So I've come to love Pinterest and food blogs, love food blogs.  The good thing about food blogs are that you get good writing, I mean, the whole story about how they cooked this fantastic meal.  And there's also feedback, some little comment about how a reader tried the recipe and tweaked it, this way or that.  You can also ask the writer questions about the recipe.  I'm going to try and share some of the gems that I find with my readers.

So far every search has resulted in a yummy recipe.  For example, I found a recipe for oatmeal carrot cookies.  It all came about when I had plenty of oatmeal and plenty of carrots so I searched oatmeal carrot cookies.  And there it was, from a food blogger, "Nutrition Nut on the Run".  http://www.nutritionnutontherun.com/recipes-2/recipage/?recipe_id=6011462#.UTf6MKViitc

So as far as the taste, I thought they were awesome.  They have two of my favorite things: real maple syrup (Canadian, of course, worth the splurge) and fresh ginger.   I plugged the recipe into the Myfitnesspal app and it's about 176 calories per cookie and yields about 12 cookies.  A little high for a snack for me, but I think it would make an excellent high energy snack for hikes.  As for Javy, well, he'll get used to it.

Javy eyeing me suspiciously as he tries the "new" snack!

But as wonderful as all this new technology is, I don't think I'll ever replace books- good solid books that you can hold in your hand.  And today, my friends, I scored big time at the local bookstore.  I found a copy of my favorite cookbook, the one that taught me how to cook.  Now I will master the art of baking cakes.  A couple of weeks ago, I baked a cake,  using a box cake.  I was so riddled with guilt that I went into the backyard, right around sunset.  I groveled on the ground until I found some radishes.  I held them up into the air and I swore, "As God as my witness, I will never bake a box cake, again."  (I'll bake a cake for the first person who gets that classic reference).  My guilt comes from the fact that I made the mistake/right decision to read the ingredients on the box.  I mean, it has Yellow 5 for God's sake.  Hopefully, I will have time to blog about my future endeavors.

Awesome Talk Story Bookstore Finds!