Let's Talk Food

Hello everyone! Hope you had a great Monday and are ready to charge forward this week with renewed energy and strength (mine may come in the form of caffeine, but that's okay too).

We've been keeping busy around here with birthday parties, Gator basketball parties (and tormenting our neighbors who aren't Gator fans), house guests, sleepovers, and lots and lots of cooking.

I dream of the day when I can cook exciting, delicious new recipes that I dog-ear in magazines and bookmark on web sites. I love shopping for fresh, new ingredients, and truly enjoy the process of creating something incredible for my family to eat.

But, organic meats and produce are expensive (hello - I bought 1 container of organic strawberries and 1 container of organic blueberries and it was nearly $10!!! Yikes!) so I only buy a bit at a time. And "spare time" is at a minimum these days, so cooking elaborate meals doesn't happen very often.

But when our neighbors gave us some delicious herbs and peppers from their home-grown garden, it inspired me to make some fresh, wholesome meals for my boys.

We started with the bundle of rosemary they gave us.

Mmmm...rosemary. It smells so amazing, doesn't it? Just a whiff of this herb, and I'm ready to put on my Williams-Sonoma apron and get in the kitchen!

I decided to make a roasted garlic rosemary pork loin along with some steamed green beans, cheddar-garlic mashed potatoes, and crunchy garlic bread. The house smelled so incredible when Brian got home that evening. No need to light a candle baby...the rosemary and garlic provided the perfect aroma for our family gathering.

The next meal inspiration came from the huge bunch of fresh basil our neighbors gave us.

I'm a girl that's all about convenience. But I recently switched from the jarred spaghetti sauce, to making my own, and it is so yummy. I was shocked to see how much sugar is in the jarred sauces (probably why they taste so good). Making my own allows me not only to control what goes in it, but also what doesn't go in it. Ya know what I mean?

I tore up a bunch of the fresh basil and let it cook with the tomato sauce in the Crock Pot all afternoon. The resulting sauce was so heavenly, I ate over whole wheat pasta for leftovers two days in a row!

The last day of my fresh-inspired cooking, came in the form of Poblano peppers.

I had never cooked with Poblano peppers before, so I wasn't sure what the heat level was going to be. I was happily surprised that they tasted like a green pepper with just a slight kick of heat. I diced them up and used them along with avocado (sprinkled with sea salt), salsa, and freshly grated sharp cheddar to top our taco salads. So, so good!

Using these fresh ingredients has inspired me to take a baby step out of my comfort zone and cook with some things that I may not normally buy; to try some new recipes that don't involve 4 chicken breasts and a Crock Pot...and it reminded me that fresh is always better. Always.

What new recipes or ingredients have you tried recently? I'd love to hear about it! Leave me a comment and let me know.