Marching into Spring?

 

Yes, I know it's only March 1st and spring doesn't officially come until the end of the month, but a girl can dream, can't she? This has been the coldest and snowiest winter! I am longing for flowers and birds chirping.

But instead I've been hunkering down in my warm house and staying busy in my kitchen. I make just about everything from scratch. I love to cook and bake and love a challenge so I'm always up for trying new things.

I'm loving the versatility of my sourdough starter. The only thing I need to do is make sure I'm planning ahead because it takes time for the dough to rise when making bread.

I made pizza the other night and it was delicious. My taste has mostly returned after a year and I'm so thankful!

Yesterday, I made cinnamon raisin bagels and the texture is perfect on these.

My sauerkraut is fermenting nicely on the counter (see the bubbles). Once it's done (about 10 days) I will give these jars a water bath seal and then the sauerkraut will stay nicely on my shelves. I did make a batch back in the fall in a large crock and unfortunately, it got moldy so I'm going back to my tried and true method of canning it.

Not every experiment works. I want to make French macarons which uses almond flour. Almond flour is super expensive so I decided to make my own flour with my grain mill with almonds I had. Oops! It turned the almonds to almond butter instead. That is a yummy mistake.

I roasted two whole chickens in my roaster yesterday. We had one for dinner last night and I'm making chicken pie with a homemade puff pastry crust for our small group tonight. When I was done roasting them, I put the carcass bones back into the roaster, added a bag full of veggie scraps I had in my freezer and covered it with water. I also added kosher salt and peppercorns. Then I put it back in the oven for a couple of hours, strained and now I have broth.

This coming weekend is our missions conference and our missionary is from France. So we are having French pastries after the evening service on Sunday. I've printed out a few recipes and am looking forward to trying them. I made my own puff pastry yesterday and it was surprisingly easy! 

I also made a double batch of gnocchi yesterday and after flash freezing it, transferred it into a freezer bag. So now I have gnocchi when I need it for a dish. It's so good!

Food prices are going through the roof here. I went to pick up eggs yesterday which are normally .99 at Aldi. They were $1.72 yesterday! The price of beef is outrageous as are many other prices.

I am thankful that because I started making everything from scratch years ago and know how to make things stretch. It does take time and it keeps me busy in between everything else I do, but I enjoy it.

I have a couple of sewing orders to fill and I really, really need to get more items in my Etsy shop, but it's been hard to find the time lately. However, I've been trying to make a few things each week and hopefully can get more in there. It seems as fast as I make something, it sells. That's not a bad problem to have.

Have a wonderful day and stay warm! Spring is right around the corner!