Eating and living locally . . . mindfully . . . simply.
Welcome to our first official Fit Jerk Friday! Without further ado, here’s FJ! Getting the ball rolling on anything new is quite the bitch as most of you will know, specially if you’re a fellow blogger. So for the first FitJerk Friday, I was actually stumped. “What the hell should I start with?” Eventually, I settled on the concept of potential. Your potential specifically. What you are capable of achieving in your lifetime is so staggering, it might cause your brain to implode if {Read More}
Can I just say, this was the most delicious meal I’ve had in awhile? This Dark Days Challenge thing is harder than I thought it would be. Before I started this challenge, I thought I had the eating local thing down pat. What I didn’t realize was, how very hard it is to have every. single. ingredient local. So many times, the sides are mostly local, but the meat isn’t. Or the meat is, but the sides aren’t. Or I {Read More}
One of the reasons that I try to eat at locally owned restaurants, and cook with local ingredients, is to support my local economy. I live in Michigan, a state that has been hit hard by the downturn. Many people think of Michigan as one big overgrown Detroit, but West Michigan has a charm all its own. Finding locally-owned restaurants is surprisingly easy, especially when you consider that Grand Rapids is not a very large city. I’m always finding new {Read More}
Today I’d like to introduce what I hope will be come a regular feature, Pantry Essentials. As a new cook, I keep reading that having quality ingredients on hand are necessary. But what does quality mean, and what ingredients do I need? I’d also like to get more organized. My pantry is in dire straights. It’s a hodgepodge of bulk bags of grains, 4 year old boxes of Hamburger Helper from when DH and I moved in together, and random cans {Read More}
This is the pie that I made for DH’s family. When it came out of the oven, I was like “oh crap,” because it was still quite watery. I prayed that it would set up by the time we got around to eating it. After the Apple Rice Stuffing incident, I was sort of dreading cutting into it. I saw that MIL had bought a pumpkin pie, so I figured if worst came to worst, we could just eat that {Read More}
Please excuse the quality of this photo, as it was taken at MIL’s house at 6 PM in her kitchen on a snowy Michigan evening. I’m starting to feel like a failure at this Dark Days Challenge thing. I had a meal planned for tonight, but was not feeling well, and have a refrigerator full of leftovers. I made several items that were local over the past week, but not an entire meal. This Dilly Mashed Potatoes Dish is actually {Read More}
So, DH and I decided to make dinner for his mom, sister, and grandparents for a belated Christmas celebration. On Christmas Day, his mom was in the hospital with pneumonia. No fun. I was a little nervous because I have never cooked for them before, and every time we go there for dinner they cook a LOT of food. As in, both DH and his sister take home enough leftovers so that we eat for a week. Also, it’s very {Read More}
Don’t you love weekends where you actually have time to make a real breakfast? Or maybe you’re one of those people who has time to make a real breakfast every morning. For me, it’s a special treat. And this waffle/topping combination from Simply in Season is just perfect for such a weekend. By the way, I just bought a new recipe program called Living Cook. It will allow me to calculate nutrition information, so as we enter the new year, {Read More}
So, what does The Local Cook do on her day off? Today was a splendid example. DH and I wanted to go out to eat, so we headed out to Gaia’s for breakfast. Unfortunately it was closed, since it was New Year’s Day. What restaurant is closed on New Year’s day? Apparently a lot of them. The other restaurants in the area had long lines. So we headed over to Hop Cat, which had sent me an email earlier in {Read More}
When FJ first asked me to create a meal based on the raw diet, I realized there are a lot of versions of raw diets. I finally figured out that he was talking mostly about a Paleo-type diet as described here. This menu might seem summery, but sometimes we need that here in Michigan! Main course: Grilled Fish DH helped me out here with his new smoker/grill thing. Basically he thawed some tilapia fillets, and layered lemon slices on top {Read More}
