And nothing exploded!

What a great domestic day! Soup, carnitas, baked chicken, friends, dancing in the kitchen, great grocery deals... I ROCK!!

Yesterday, I hit up the produce bus for some fresh kale. I was determined to make sausage, kale and white bean soup. I really wanted to get the kale and root veggies from them. I ended up coming home with organic sausage, a ton of kale and what I thought was a turnip. But maybe it's a rutabega? I'm perplexed and not really sure what I put in my soup, but it's good so I'm not too concerned about it!

Regardless... I was so excited to make this soup today! I had to hit up the grocery store for onions, carrots, celery and a few other items. I came home with pork loin (for carnitas), two packages of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, various veggies, butter, two gallons of milk and a few other things for under $30. Not too shabby! I came home knowing exactly how I'd use these groceries and I was determined to maximize my time in the kitchen and adopt a Once A Month Cooking mentality.

First, I tackled that amazing soup! DELISH! Okay wait.. let me start at the beginning. First I cooked the organic sausage and drained it. As I was chopping the root veggies, I kept... er... sampling the sausage. Yes, I was sampling it; making sure it was good enough for us to put in the soup. That sausage.... it was like a pork dream come true! Such a mellow, butter after taste. I wanted to sit down with a straw and suck it all up slowly. Thank you, thank you, thank you Farm to Family for selling the Polyface sausage! I'll be back for more!!

While my root veggies were cooking in the leftover pork fat (not the healthiest choice but so so scrumptuous!), I did another first: I cooked the white beans in a pressure cooker. Not any old pressure cooker, but my grandmother's pressure cooker! I'm sure she was having a good chuckle watching down on me as I danced in the kitchen to my Pandora station, cut root veggies and fretted about the cooker exploding everywhere.


This soup turned out to be so amazing! And it makes a huge batch so I shared half of it with a friend. I think from now on when I make a soup, I will always find a friend to pass some of it along to. Next time, I'm going to try to make it using only local ingredients. Gotta support those farmers!

Oh! The rest of the food! The pork tenderloin is in the crockpot with some lime juice, busy working on becoming carnitas. That should be done by bedtime tonight and I'll put a lot of it up in the freezer. The chicken breasts are in the oven with the remaining onion bits and carrots, roasting in a little bit of left over chicken broth. When that's done, I'll put the veggies in the fridge to snack on and will cut the chicken up into bite-size pieces. Then into baggies and into the freezer!

Out of the $30 I spent today on groceries, I have at least a dozen meals for my family of four! The carnitas last forever. They're such an easy, inexpensive meal that spreads out for quite a while. By cooking and cutting the chicken in advance, I find that I'm able to spread it out over more meals than if I just plopped a chicken breast on each person's plate.

Move over Claire Huxtable and Martha Stewart! I'm rockin' it today!

Oh no!! You turned the page!

Now really. Who doesn't love "The Monster At The End Of This Book" with dear, loveable, furry Grover?

That's just SOUPer

I'm not a big fan of soups. Most commercial soups from a can leave me hungry again in an hour so I avoid them. Lately, we've realized that Little M is more likely to eat veggies in a soup than separate on his plate. Armed with this knowledge, we've been experimenting with soups lately.

In yet another fit of random blog surfing, I found myself salivating over this sausage soup. I don't think I've ever eaten kale in my life, but I'm determined to try this recipe out!

Investigating an angry chicken

Through some random craft-related blog surfing and clicking, I came across the Angry Chicken blog. I have read this blog in the past and enjoyed it but never kept up with it for some reason.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading through the archives and have found some treasures.

One of my goals this year is to be more 'home made'. This includes embracing some natural home-remedies. I haven't spent much time researching yet, but this witchy post about herbs for kids has inspired me to start digging around the internet.

Looks like I'll be building an herb planter for the balcony as well as the topsy-turvy tomato planters!

Roma!

Looks like Roma tomatoes are best for making sun-dried tomatoes so now I know what type of tomatoes I'll be growing! Found a great "recipe" for drying the tomatoes in the oven. I know, they aren't really 'sun dried' if you're drying them in the oven, but I have limited balcony space and the idea of bugs getting on them creeps me out. I'm excited about making my own 'oven-dried' tomatoes! I love to chop sun-dried tomatoes and eat them with bites of mozzarella cheese.

Vertical Gardening

I am determined to make use of my apartment balcony and turn it into a garden this summer! Today I spent some time researching vertical gardening, when to plant various veggies and how to make my own Topsy Turvy planter.

Although the directions aren't incredibly clear, this one set of instructions definitely shows how to make an upside down planter. Another version of the same, using 5 gallon plastic buckets. And while this set of instructions is missing the photos, the comments left beflow the post are very helpful.

I'm particularly excited about trying this... especially when I read that someone used the upside down planter for growing strawberries!

I definitely want to grow tomatoes this summer. I'm trying to decide how many plants I should grow. I want to can my own marinara and salsa this summer. I'd like to put up at least a dozen jars of marinara and maybe half a dozen jars of salsa. Not a ton, but enough to get us through the winter. I'm sure if I put up more jars, we'll eat more though.