bake more

mmMMMmMmmMMm

Maybe less apples and more crumblies next time though.

As luck would have it, my sister brought us garden-fresh vegetables this weekend, a gift from her new boyfriend and his family garden. Among the sundry variety of tomatoes were three beautiful yellow squash and a gigantic zucchini. Now we have all those tomatoes and a really beautiful zucchini souffle with mashed squash and cheddar. The whole house smells so good!

This recipe is very similar to the squash bake I learned two weeks ago, but the major difference is this one called for flour and baking powder – here’s hoping the batter turned out alright. Off to find out…

I remember being moderately scornful of the whole idea of home economics class in high school, probably as some sort of alliance-seeking with my woolhat dad, and boy has life shown me up in this regard, over and over again.

Home economics is HARD WORK! I’m not even trying to run a household – I’m working on just me stuff – and it’s hard. This weekend, I found myself attempting to create a month-long menu, 28 days of recipes I already know (or things that won’t be difficult to pick up) so I could have a food budget, make far fewer trips to the grocery store, and minimize the amount of unhappy surprises inherent in feeding yourself. An added bonus to trying this out is I can figure out a way to keep from being bored by eating the same foods day in and day out.

I’d give myself about a C for “nice try, but keep working on this” because it was worth doing but it isn’t a presentable menu, by any means. The simple fact is, I’m one of those people who is always going to spend more money than absolutely necessary on food, and I don’t mean by eating out, either. I just like to splurge on food.

The most exciting part of this exercise was when I realized I wanted to learn how to bake more casserole dishes. The squash bake I recently discovered was so good, and I would like to have more of these recipes among my options.

I would like to have a fairly decent menu of meals worked up so I can cook for myself without too much fuss on a consistent, economical basis. Some of those meals will require baking. Ah, that feels good – having a clear reason for wanting to bake more often will probably help me achieve this goal more quickly. It has the added benefit of helping me figure out when such a thing can be accomplished.

On deck: some kind of fish. That shouldn’t be too hard, and it’s great brain food. Maybe I could try a marinade? Maybe just lemon butter – simple, good.

COOKIES! OATMEAL RAISIN COOKIES!

They were like crack.

Some of my mango bread. It was nice-looking. I don’t think it tasted quite as good after a few days had passed, but I guess I’ll keep trying. And I think I’ll mark this goal as “done” after I’ve baked 5 things. I also baked cookies, but I didn’t like the way they tasted.

Grrr.

This sort of knowledge is really important to me – knowing that I can feed myself economically, with satisfaction, day in and day out can help me get on with the business of living.

I’ve got a recipe box and am working up a repertoire of repeat recipes. I may only try a new recipe every few weeks, but this will build on itself as I continue. My latest: squash supreme. Yum!

http://bakingwiththeboys.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/twd-my-fresh-mango-bread-well-my-pick-anyway/

It was incredible right out of the oven, the bread had risen perfectly and it was really pretty. It looked better than most of the pictures, if I do say so myself.

Too bad I ate it before I could take any pictures.

I made this cake for Mother’s Day on Sunday. It’s a pineapple sponge, topped with pineapple butter cream and dessicated coconut.

I love love love baking! I have tons of recipes and stuff… and I always enjoy secretly snitching some of the batter before it goes in the oven. I started to bake often and I gained ten pounds! whoops! So for lent this year I gave up baking sweets.

)=

I still love to bake though =)