Well, here it is – my very first blog! It’s been a long time coming, that’s for sure. I’ve spent MONTHS reading up online on how to start writing a blog, tips and tricks, etc. It was quite the task trying to soak up all this information, it can be really confusing.

What I did manage to take in is that I need to be myself when writing – create my own voice and let my readers hear it! I’ll do my best with this, and please forgive me after all, I am a newbie!

What You Will Find in This Blog:

A little bit of everything to be honest. I am a very crafty person, I love to cook, I love animals and writing. I hope to have something for everyone to enjoy.

My hubby and I cook a new meal almost every night of the week. We love Pinterest for finding new recipes, and always try them out. One thing you’ll be sure to find is all the recipes that both fail and succeed. I’ll also post the recipes for you to try at home – maybe I just can’t cook and that’s why it failed! I guess we’ll have to wait and see .

My hubby is also going to hopefully starting breeding his SNAKE! If he does, I’ll be sure to post pictures and updates throughout the whole process. This is a first for both of us, so it should be fun!

Finally, this blog is going to serve as my diary. The ups and downs of my life will be shared with everyone who desires to read – be prepared for LOTS of drama.

That’s all for now;

- kat

A Date with Your Family (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I want to make sure that my family has access to a blog which will have our recipes, both new and family recipes for all to use. I frequent many blogs such as This Week for Dinner and Pinch my Salt to find nutritional, healthy foods for my family. Come along on this journey with us.

Grandma no longer cooks. She lives in a single room in a retirement community where her meals are provided. But I was delighted to receive this photo of her reading my cookbook.

Thank you, Grandma, for your love, support, and encouragement!

Do you have someone who inspires you to cook?

…brings May flowers and summertime BBQ moments!

I am in search of healthy BBQ recipes! The more creative, the better!  Do YOU have a healthy recipe you would like to share?  The recipe MUST be one you have made yourself or have personally enjoyed, NOT one borrowed off the Internet.

The winner will receive a sample packet of all the Shakeology® flavors AND a 7-day healthy meals menu.

Contest starts: Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Deadline for entries: Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Please submit your recipe to: KeepChoosingConsistency@gmail.com
Winners will be announced Friday, April 19, 2013 and chosen recipe shared for all!

Good luck and Keep Choosing Consistency,

Wendy

My rating is 5 out of 5 because it is a great idea that has been well thought through.

http://www.supercook.com

Photo by Shimelle Laine

Here’s the link:  http://goo.gl/tke8h

If you have friends or family who are interested in weight loss, weight maintenance, or just healthy eating, please share the link with them, too.

Thanks for being on this journey with me!

Do you have any old flip-photo books around the house? This is a quick, easy Do-It-Yourself project for your favorite recipes that are tattered from being used so often. Time to upgrade these family-favorite recipes to a new and improved keepsake book. This great idea comes from a mentor of mine, Mrs. Nellie Birdsall, as she is a cooking queen-having mastered all the tricks of the trade (including recipe card organization). This is my first year living on my own, with my own kitchen instead of a Dinning Commons to cook and clean up after me, and organizing my favorite recipes has never been easier. I have three main books: Sweet Treats, Main Courses, and Sides & Salads. The cost of this project was a grand total of $5.00!

You will need:

1. as many plastic 4 x 6 photo books as desired

(purchased 3 at my local Dollar Tree)

2. Recipe cards (4” x 6”)

3. Design your cover label & slip in your recipes!

I love the look of these books, and that my recipes are protected while making an absolute mess in the kitchen!

The Cooking With What You’ve Got Challenge is going to be held once a month. I have decided to organise this challenge, so that you can get the chef within to come out and get YOU cooking with more confidence. This will be a great exercise for you to experiment with cooking methods and ingredients and begin using that inner chef a little bit more. But there’s a catch. I will be deciding on what type of cooking method that you will be used to prepare your dish every time.

This could be any one or more from below:

• Baking
• Steaming
• Grilling
• Roasting
• Boiling
• Stewing
• Frying
• Shallow Frying
• Deep Frying

Rules are:

• Anyone may take part in the challenge
• Create a new blog post with the title Mircel’s Kitchen Challenge – (METHOD) and write the recipe with a description of how you made the dish along with a photo
• Leave a courtesy link back to the challenge (http://mircelskitchen.wordpress.com/cooking-with-what-youve-got-challenge/)
• Use the TAG “MircelsKitchen” in your post
• If you do not have a Blog you can leave your post in the comments section below or on my Facebook page
• The challenge may come up at any time within the running month
• 1 recipe will be picked and added to a Recipe e-Book available for download at a later stage
• All blog posts must be posted 48hrs after announcement of the METHOD/S for the months challenge
• Follow Mircel’s Kitchen so that you don’t miss out on the monthly challenge announcement and like the Facebook page

I hope you will let your creativity run wild and enjoy taking part in this challenge, It should be good fun. Remember keep calm and use your past experiences with food to come up with new and exciting dishes.

Lets get COOKING WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT!

Related articles

• I need help from my blogging friends. (countrygirllifeonthefarm.com)
• Best Recipe Blog – The Homies 2013 (thekitchn.com)
• Calling All Cooks and Writers (newwritersreview.wordpress.com)

When I was a little girl and would visit my grandma, I would sit at the table and just read through all her recipes.  I would then help her (or at least I thought I was) copy the cards that were in really bad shape.  Thinking back I sure she would have rather used her worn and splattered card.  Instead of my messy kid writing recipe card, but she let me because I thought it was fun.

I want to challenge  you all to start a recipe box if you don’t have one.  Think about it what if you couldn’t get on to the internet and find your favorite recipe.  Or what happens when you pass on and your grandchildren try to figure out what your special recipe for this and that where?  When I find a favorite recipe online or in a cook book, I copy it down an index card and put it away.  Now that I am blogging it will be fun to make every recipe in my box so I can take pictures of it, or attempt to get a picture that is half decent.

I will forever treasure recipes in my grandmothers handwriting.  Pass on the memory of a recipe box, I bet you will be surprised how much you use it once it’s done.

ps. I love mason jars and often keep them around the house. Usually I’ll buy a product in a jar similar to this and I’ll wash it out and add it to the bunch. Recycle & Reuse is a common trend in my household You can also purchase them at any grocery store. Aren’t they cute? ♥

We went grocery shopping today to get all the supplies and tonight’s meal of pork tenderloin is marinating as we speak!

http://chefmommy-brandao.blogspot.ca/2012/03/pork-tenderloin-with-pan-sauce.html

Here’s hoping I stick to it

Update: First dinner was yummy!:)

I mean anything they want to talk about:  today’s events, recipes, patterns, stay at home job info, extra income ideas, etc…

There’s something wonderfully nostalgic about handwritten recipes. Complete with jam stains, a coffee cup ring, embedded crumbs and fading ink, handwritten recipe cards can instantly transport you to another time and another kitchen. Of course, we now have a sort of digital recipe book with the wonderful world of endless online recipes and the Food Network’s monopoly on thousands if not millions of recipes available for almost any meal you’re craving at the click of a search button. Yet, after spending a recent Saturday afternoon clicking through 1036 Google results for a recipe I recently liked, made, and promptly forgot where I found the directions, I decided I was going to bring handwritten recipes back to my kitchen and end these ridiculous, time-sucking searches.

Of course keeping it simple is the whole point of this project. Modern options of endless creativity are fabulous but don’t you ever get sick of them? Don’t you ever just want to do it the old-fashioned plain way? In honor of simplicity, I was going to just use index cards but I remembered my Vintage Tea Party book had beautiful, free printables available (print them here) that were perfect to feature the title of whatever recipe I was working on, so I decided to get just a little fancy and use them as my template:
A very wonderful friend gave me a vintage writing set complete with dipping ink and a fountain pen that I finally found a worthy enough project for, but of course that isn’t essential, a regular pen would be just grand. Write your title on the front of your card, add the ingredients and directions to the reverse, and you’ve instantly made your own memory that you’ll never have to Google again.

After I wrote my recipe cards, I reaffirmed to myself that I needed to keep doing this, I was rather saddened by my hideous modern handwriting compared to the old recipes in my box. Oh well, it’s a step in the right direction.

Etsy has hundreds of super cheap, vintage recipe boxes, both sophisticated and fun ones in case you’re searching for your own. They also have some great options for organizing your recipe box with handmade dividers in case you’re a bit organization obsessed. Whatever you desire though, simple, plain, fancy, or cute, write your recipes down! This generation is dangerously veering towards leaving nothing tangible behind when we take our laptops and go, and this is just a tiny way of changing that.

- <3 A. 

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