First Posting

Hello Everyone!

I am a home cook who likes to dabble in many different things from easy to challenging. I own a ton of cook books and am an advid watcher of a variety of cooking shows. I consider myself to be an adventurous eater but I am married to a very picky husband. Therefore, I often find myself having to adapt recipes to his taste. Example: I LOVE mushrooms and he won't touch them with a ten foot pole. I usually will add mushrooms to my own plate though after I've cooked a dinner for him where I think that mushrooms would work well in. I cook a lot of comfort foods like casseroles because my husband grew up in a huge family of eight kids and this is the kind of food that he is used to eating. His mother tells me that this kind of cooking was easy when then kids were growing up, filling for FIVE teenage boys and no one complained. So, when we first got married I photocopied her recipe book where she had all of her old hand written recipes on file cards. Some of the old recipes actually called for adding lard, haha!

I also enjoy making a variety of homemade sausages and pasta using the attachments with my stand mixer and have lots of recipes and tips that I'd be more than happy to share with you. I've also just recently started making my own cheese and have had three successful attempts so far. My Mom got me a couple of cheese making kits from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company for Christmas. Although we really love many types of cheeses, I wasn't too sure about it at first and thought that this might be too difficult of a challenge. Making cheese is a science, kind of like baking, and I'm a much better cook than I am a baker. However, once I attempted my first batch of mozzarella and it turned out to be a great success I was totally hooked! If you've never tasted it, there is nothing more delicious than fresh, warm mozzarella cheese and in think that everyone should give it a try. It's also really fun to make and it would be a cool thing for kids to make their own string cheese :)
Please go to www.cheesemaking.com and check out the Cheese Queen's website.

Okay, I think that I probably sound like a stay at home Mom, but I'm not. I'm the one that works outside of the home and my wonderful husband now takes care of the house, our two dogs and our canary. I just love to cook so that is the one thing (other than more work) that I do at home after work. Yes, my husband could cook for himself before we got married but I took that over and he graciously stepped aside to let me. Speaking of dogs, I also make my own homemade doggie food. There is so much awful stuff in commercial pet food. I'll post some links in later posts and it will probably make you run scared too. Actually, it is less expensive to make your own really healthy doggy food then it is to buy the stuff sold in
stores. I'll share my recipe with you in my next post.

Have a great night and please feel free to email me with your thoughts and questions!

Angelique