From Scratch

I've loved having adventures in my kitchen for years. There are so many things to explore, and it's fun to see just how much can be done from scratch. Through the years, I've created cinnamon rolls, peanut butter balls, asiago & onion bagels, pot-stickers, breakfast burritos with beans, bacon, eggs and cheese, pulled pork, roasted chicken and vegetables, grilled pork tenderloin, cookies of all sorts, citrus stuffed turkey, my grandmother's enchiladas, stuffed shells, lasagnas, corned beef and cabbage, soups and chili, stuffed cabbage, mocha cupcakes with Bailey's icing...and now I'm drooling on my keyboard. And that's just the short list of what I can think of right now off the top of my head.

When I'm in a good mood, I love to cook. I don't necessarily want to eat it all, but I want to cook it. Thankfully, I can bring some of the items into work. Now, it's a bit harder to get into the swing of cooking. Half of the time, it's just me at the dinner table, so it has been a little bit of a challenge for myself to make real food, rather than another turkey sandwich on wheat, not that I don't do that on occasion.

The other half of the time I have Aiden, and though I try hard to just make something I would eat, and have him eat it too, I've resorted to shortcuts on occasion. Any mom who tells you they never had, is likely lying through their teeth. I'm already proud to say that I never fed him jarred baby food - I made my own, and had control of the ingredients. Plus, meats should not be any shade of gray.

In the past few weeks, I've been making a sincere effort to meal plan both for when it's just me, and when Aiden's with me. When Aiden's here, he often wants to see everything I'm doing, so I make sure to lift him up, he reminds me the stove is "hot," and I show him what I'm doing as best I can. His interest in what I'm cooking spurred me to get him a play kitchen for his birthday. Together we go through the play foods, and I let him know what they are.

Momma's kitchen helper in his very own kitchen

So tonight, I decided to make something...from scratch. It wasn't fancy. It wasn't gourmet. But it was good, satisfying, and I got myself back in the kitchen. Tonight it was just dinner for me, so I was able to eat after the sun went down rather than before. It was simple, and it was delicious: teriyaki marinaded chicken with sauteed snow peas & onion. Again, not anything fancy. No high tech gadgets used, no huge prep time (other than marinading the chicken, but that was passive prep).

So it wasn't anything fancy, but it was GOOD. It's small steps getting me back into my kitchen. Some of my kitchen is still packed in boxes somewhere in my garage, but I'll get to them soon. In the meantime, I'll just have to "settle" with dinners like these!