Food...yum yum

Lately, I've been having a lot of fun mixing up some great concoctions in the kitchen. Although my rotation is pretty exhausting, the hours aren't too long, which means most nights I can come home and make dinner at a decent time. I tend to get bored with certain foods pretty quickly so I've been trying a lot of new recipes. Take tonight, for instance. I made homemade split pea soup and cheddar biscuits from scratch (with help from an Ina Garten recipe). Both were quite successful! The biscuits were a little on the salty side, so next time I'll cut back a little on the salt or cheese, but they were so easy to make and super yummy. Click here for the recipe. Last night I made Brinner - aka breakfast for dinner - waffles, eggs and turkey bacon. The waffles were made with the Golden Malted flour from Williams-Sonoma and were the best waffles I've ever made! I've learned that the key to fluffy pancakes and crispy waffles is separating the eggs, beating the egg whites until nice and airy, then folding them into the rest of the batter just before cooking. Corey and I love breakfast foods, but never make breakfast because I'm just not a morning person. We decided to start our own tradition of making Brinner every weekend - I'm excited to find and try a bunch of breakfast recipes!

Other yummy things I've made lately include herb-crusted pork tenderloin with roasted butter potatoes, ground turkey enchiladas, steak marinated in soy sauce & garlic with sticky white rice, chocolate chip pancakes, cranberry muffins (sooo yummy!), turkey chili, pizza bread, beef & barley soup, mint chocolate chip cookies....and the list will just keep growing. Sure, I've had some flops, but not too many, thankfully! And Corey has been great about trying everything I've made :) If anyone has any favorite recipes they want to share with me that would be awesome! I've found a couple blogs of people who cook then post their recipes and pictures, so I've had lots of fun reading those. I've only tried one recipe from them, but plan on trying lots more. Only problem is many of their recipes are baked things, and I'm trying to cut back on the sweets, so it will take me a long time to try every recipe I'd like. I'll get there though!

Thankfully we just received the treadmill we ordered after Christmas (using money we received from the in-laws and money Corey's company gives to employees to spend on fitness equipment or a gym membership). Our goal Saturday was to assemble it in our guest bedroom/office. It took a couple hours, some arguing and frustration and a couple curse words, but we were successful! We also set up a TV Corey was able to get using some credits from his company to watch while working out. Both of us worked out on it today and are pretty pleased with the machine! So now despite this cooking I plan to do, maybe I'll not only not gain weight, but hopefully lose some (as I have managed to pack on more pounds than I like in PA school).