Taste of Fall

 Yes, this post is all about food. Some may be tired of food but I have 2 reasons why I keep taking pictures of those things I cook. First, to show that I can. I feel like so many of my teen years were wasted because I did not take up the chance to learn to cook more, so now I am teaching myself. The second reason is for my own self-esteem. Taking pictures of my food, reminds me that I can make things that are tasty, healthy, beautiful, and--most important--edible. Besides, food is such an important part of life, why not have fun with it?

Yesterday was a big cooking day as I tried new things. First, spiced pancakes to start me off in that fall mood. (Thank goodness my friend Lara has cinnamon and nutmeg.) Topped with maple syrup, it really did taste like fall and made me very happy.

I have yet to make any main dishes from the 4 cookbooks I have. Determined to make something exciting from them I looked through each and found a recipe in my chicken cookbook: Chicken and Ham Croquettes. Now there were several problems for this to happen. 1) I don't have a frier. 2) I don't have ham. 3) It called for ground chicken, again I don't keep a storage of this. So nearly everything in the recipe was changed: ground chicken to fine chopped chicken, ham to diced potatoes and onions, basil and thyme for parsley. I also made home-made bread crumbs and roux. Thank goodness Mom taught me how to correctly pan-fry food this summer, it helped so that I didn't burn myself.

My roommate Jen was the only other person home so we had a little party of our croquettes and a movie. I will definitely be making this again.

This is Jen.

Since I only needed half a potato for the croquettes, I have half a potato to make something with. I've never made hash-browns so that was the winner.  I'm so glad they turned out because I wasn't sure they would. I made scrambled eggs to go with it. I attempted to make them lie the fluffy yellow ones you get at restaurants by my pan was on to high for the potatoes so my oil darkened and thus my eggs darkened as well. Note: turn heat down for eggs.

And finally a picture of myself this morning to show I'm alive. Note the gray sweater. It's a really warm sweater, because it is freezing! Heater's on.