My New Recipe Compilation

Hi friends!  It's been a while since I last posted on here.  Sorry about that!  I've been keeping busy with the kids, the house, the activities, working on starting an etsy shop and my new love- cooking.  I used to absolutely HATE cooking.  I dreaded making dinner and I used to make Chris do most of it.  He enjoyed cooking all along and he's a great cook.  He's more of the experimental type of cook where I am all about the recipe.  That is why I always loved baking - there's no guesswork or estimating.  There are absolute rules about how much vanilla extract or baking powder to use.

I joined Pinterest a while ago and started pinning recipe ideas on a few different boards.  That made me start thinking about cooking some of those recipes.  There were a lot of them piling up in there.  The main thing I always dreaded about making dinner every night was that I never had a plan and I would stress about it all day until I figured something out.  UGH - not fun!  So, I decided to start making a weekly menu.  I choose 6 or 7 recipes for dinners for the week, figure out what we don't already have and then make a list, send Chris shopping (hee hee!) and then I'm prepared for the week.  We can choose which thing we want for that night and then I'm set to go.  This method of planning has worked out GREAT for us.  We also don't buy too much fresh ingredients that often anymore and things don't go bad as much.  Another win! 

I compiled quite the list of recipes on pinterest and decided I should print them out so that I don't have to have my computer in the kitchen with me all the time when I cook.  For Christmas, I got an amazon.com gift certificate from my in-laws so I decided to use it toward making my own recipe compilation of my favorite things to make.  Recipes we really like make it into the book.  I just got this stuff a couple weeks ago because it took me a long time to decide on the book and style I liked best.    Here is the one I chose:

It's called the: "Create Your Own Collected Recipes Cookbook - Turquoise & Gray"  It comes in other colors but I have turquoise in my house and it's one of my favorite colors. :)   I liked that it came with the dividers and that I could choose the labels for the tabs that I wanted to use and there were some that were blank for custom sections.  I had to purchase the page protectors separately but that's ok.  I can get more if/ when I outgrow the initial 2 packages I bought.  I like using the page protectors because they are wipe-able if something spills or splatters on them!  Here's a shot of a few of the tabs:

 

Building this book has been a decently long process and it's still ongoing.  I find new recipes to add to it a lot.  I wanted to find a cool font to use in it so I did a few searches for free fonts and found some really cute ones.  I ended up going with one called KG Strawberry Limeade.  It's got some cute curls and it's fun but still easy to read for me.  I copied some of the recipes straight from the internet and when I pasted them I had the program change them into my format so it was quite easy.  I'm sorry these pictures aren't the best but here's a sample:

  

 I also like having the freedom of being able to spread a recipe over 2 pages and not having to cram into a small space like I was trying to do with another program I have.  I like this too because I can just keep adding more until the book is full.    The above recipe is one I have made a few times by the Pioneer Woman - Ree Drummond.  I've kind of become obsessed with her cooking.  I even bought her cook book with that amazon.com gift certificate too! 

Here's the recipe I made for dinner last night.  Sorry the picture quality isn't great!  It's Chicken Cordon Bleu Roll-Ups.  I like the pattern on the dividers too.  Cute stock pots, right? 

Over all, I'm super excited about this recipe book and the convenience it will provide me in finding favorites and having them within arms reach.  Chris is pretty psyched about it too and wants me to put some of his favorites in there as well. 

This morning, I found a new recipe on Pinterest on my Breakfast recipe board called Bacon Egg and Cheese Breakfast Ring.  Here is the link to it if you'd like to try it:
http://www.navywifecook.com/2012/01/bacon-egg-and-cheese-ring.html

Here are some pictures of it.  It came out pretty awesome!

Above:  Just out of the oven.

 A cross-section view

 And my lovely (yet slightly blurry (SORRY)) paper plate with yummy breakfast goodness on it.  mmmMMmm  This was a great recipe and not hard to make at all.  I think total it took me about half an hour to make it and that included cooking the eggs and bacon, shredding cheese and baking it for 16 minutes.  Not bad!  We happened to have all of  the ingredients for it and I was hungry so I decided to go for it.  It paid off!  Thanks for reading and happy cooking!!!