I love to cook.

More importantly, I love to eat.

I have loved it my entire life.

Hamburger casserole was my special dish at age 12.

I moved to college.

I was on a very limited budget.

Semi-homemade meals from cheap, prepackaged, frozen, processed foods were at one time inspiring to me ☹

I had a baby.

Much to my family’s dismay, I became a label reader.

My husband was a medical resident; I was still on a very limited budget.

I moved to Michigan and started shopping at Trader Joe’s. (click here to send them an email and strongly encourage that they come to Utah.)

Labels in our home typically DO NOT include…

MSG (monosodium glutamate)
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
Autolyzed yeast Extract
Artificial flavor or color
Preservatives (this is hard to get away from)
Hydrogenated Oils
Dairy products with hormones
High Fructose Corn syrup

I do 90% of my grocery shopping at Neighborhood Walmart and Costco.

The other 10%; Albertson’s, Good Earth, and Trader Joe’s imports.

I had a couple more kids.

The baby seems to be allergic to eggs and peanut butter.

Now, I’m so glad I learned to be a label reader.

I live to eat; the doctor eats to live.

I skim recipes; I change, substitute, alter, and disgard ingredients constantly.

That being said, I don’t bake often. (Only if I really have to.)

We’ve never eaten the exact same dish twice in 11 ½ years. ☺ My claim to fame!

I want to share my exciting new and old recipe with YOU. Sorry if it was once your recipe and I altered it.

If you try my recipe, tell me about it. Did you like it, hate it, change it; how and why?

Since the doctor could live off of oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and chips and salsa, I want someone to be excited with me about food and about cooking.I saw half of the movie Julie and Julia (before I fell asleep) and thought it was inspiring. Not inspiring enough to cook fattening French cuisine for a year, but enough to get excited about sharing my thoughts on food.

I love photography, but I don’t usually click photos of our food. I love hot food. But I’ll try to post a few images here and there.

A friend recently shared a recipe for No Knead Bread. One of my hobbies for the last several years has been perfecting my sourdough bread recipe from my homemade start. Well, I thought it was perfect (and perfectly easy) until this came along. I’ve made it once or twice a week for the past several weeks. There are about a gazillion of these recipes online so find one that works for you. So with out further adieu…

No Knead Bread

3 cups flour
or 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2 cups white flour

1/4 tsp. instant yeast

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cups water

Mix together the dry ingredients.
Mix in water until the water is incorporated.
Cover with plastic and let sit 8-18 hours. (the longer the better)
Transfer to well floured surface, coat with flour, cover with floured towel and let rise about 1 ½-2 hours.
After 90 minutes of rising, preheated a cast iron pot or soup pot to 450 degrees for 30 minutes.
Bake covered for 30 minutes.
Remove cover; bake an additional 10-15 minutes.
Let cool completely on rack.
Consume bread, be happy.
Further notes: This method of baking is quite forgiving if you alter the ingredients and proportions. One of the great things about a bread recipe that is so easy and involves just one loaf at a time is you don’t feel like you’re risking a lot if your experimenting goes awry.

P.S. The photo of the bread is my sourdough bread NOT No Knead Bread...