I haven’t always loved cooking, I actually remember myself 10-15 years ago disliking it.

Maybe it was because I HAD to do it having a child at home or maybe because I grew up with parents that were not enthusiastic cooks. I remember clearly that making dinner every night felt like I was under duress.

Fast forward to current days and I absolutely love cooking, creating, experimenting, sometimes failing but enjoying it none the less. Once we moved to organic foods it became obvious that the easiest (and cheapest) way is to cook from scratch. This way we can still buy organic but within a “conventional” budget.

My son has grown up and left home so with only Wayne and me there is no pressure to provide dinner every night. I mean I can say “let’s have cheese on toast” and that would be fine.
Funny how reverse psychology comes into play. The more I didn’t need to cook I wanted to cook.. And I cook every single night.. from scratch. No frozen pizzas for us or… ( sorry I run out of examples because I really can’t imagine what other people do).

I also don’t cook in batches. I know some people swear by it and I tried but for me it takes the fun out of cooking. You feel like you’re a production machine and believe me I’m already a production machine at work!!

This Saturday I baked a small loaf of bread from leftover flour that I had. Wayne mentioned before that my breads are “heavy” and I know they were as I was using “no kneading” technique which produced a heavy loaf( which is perfect for a rye bread but not for white/wholegrain). For a while I stopped making breads or made less often as you do get tired of the same product.
Bread that I made yesterday was different. It was made with yeast and allowed to rise twice and was a combination of white and wholegrain flour. When it came out of an oven it had a nice crusty top with light texture. Yum!

On Sunday I made a quick soup for lunch. I haven’t followed any recipe but instead created something myself. It felt great, it was very tasty and I had that happy moment of an artist unveiling their creation.
I don’t need to tell you where my unique creation would end in a few hours but for the time being we could savour every bite and enjoy.. 🙂
It was a perfect weekend, spending time with my best friend (my husband), tending to my garden and cooking..
Oh and did I mention I pickled my cucumbers?
We have only ONE cucumber plant but it has produced one long telegraphic-type cucumber every day. Yep, that’s right – it produced over 30 cucumbers already since mid January!
While I am yet to taste my pickles ( and critique them) but I did attempt two versions: traditional marinated pickles and “old time” fermented dill cucumbers. I’ll get the results in a few days and weeks.

For someone who is interested here is my soup recipe. Sorry no picture ( we ate it all!) Let’s call it :

RED LENTILS AND CARROT SOUP

Ingredients

Red Lentils – 1 cup
water – 4 cups
2 Carrots
1 onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
2 sprigs of parsley
salt
pepper
1/2 tsp cumin

METHOD

I blended carrots (cut in chunks) in a blender with 1/2 cup water to make them smaller and faster to cook.

Then added water to pot, added dry red lentils, carrot mush, cut onion, cut garlic and brought to boil.
Seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin, cut parsley and turned to slow boil. Cooked approx 15 minutes.
You want the the mixture to be not too runny or too thick so boil longer to reduce water if needed or add water if needed. Then after allowing slightly cool for 5 minutes I put it in a blender and after only 10 seconds I had a very tasty soup.

ENJOY 🙂