A week in food

What I made last week:

Turkey Barley Soup

Ground turkey, barley, carrots, red potatoes, green bell pepper, onion, chicken broth, and whatever seasonings you want. This one has pesto and parmesan in it, but the last time I made it it had tarragon. It's good both ways. Brown the meat, drain the juice, add the onion and soften, add broth and other veggies, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for an hour. Season to taste.

Autumn Ice Cream Sandwiches

I made these for pizza and beer night with some friends. It's my first attempt at ice cream sandwiches. A week or so ago I got some pumpkin ice cream at the grocery store, but a whole carton of pumpkin ice cream is a bit much for one person. I was starting to get sick of it. So I devised these autumnal ice cream sandwiches - take homemade ginger snaps, fill with a couple spoonfulls of pumpkin ice cream, and roll edges in mini chocolate chips. Put back in freezer for a bit to harden. These were pretty good. I'm thinking I'll try some other variations soon. I have some raspberry ice cream that I was thinking of mixing with vanilla wafers and dark chocolate.

Plain ol' gingersnaps

A manifestation of my current endeavors

When I was little, I had a kid's baking book with a ton of cookie recipes.  I must have made every cookie in that book at least once, and some several times, because I liked the feeling of making something delicious out of individual ingredients that were not "food" on their own.

Since then, I have gone through phases of baking, cooking, and not baking or cooking, but I have recently come back to cooking.  After years of experimenting with cooking and baking with less than desirable results, in the last year my passion for cooking has made itself known

, and I have become more able to determine what will taste good with what.  I am nowhere near being a Great Cook, but I think I'm a Good Cook, at least.  

And it's not just how food tastes that appeals to me - it's everything about it - putting different ingredients together, all the little decisions that you make when you're creating a meal, how you cook it, how it smells, how it feels in your mouth, how it looks.  

The looks are what got me really going, I think, because I've been posting my food pictures on facebook for a few months now, and more and more I'm getting comments asking for recipes and whatnot.  

So, I decided to put everything up here, on a blog, to make it easier to share with everyone.

So here's what I've been eating.  It's mostly experimental, and I'll try to comment on how each dish turned out and what I would do differently the next time, and if you have suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them!