Ultimate Blog Party 2011

Hello!  Thanks for stopping by from the Ultimate Blog Party.  My name is SnoWhite and my husband affectionately goes by Frog Prince.

Frog Prince and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary last July by packing up our tiny apartment and moving 600+ miles away.  Since then, we've been busy renovating our kitchen, and transitioning to new jobs.  

I'm a full time assistant biology professor and Dr. Frog Prince works with numbers {he's an educational statistics man}.  Early in our marriage we began to teach ourselves how to cook from scratch.  This was motivated mainly by a desire to eat better, which we found incredibly challenging to do when I have a severe allergy to tree nuts.

Now, we make everything from bread and crackers to yogurt and ice cream in our kitchen.  This blog houses over 800 of the recipes we've tasted and created in the past few years.

Our recipes follow three simple policies:

• They use everyday ingredients
• They are healthy 
• They are easy to prepare and contain step-by-step photo instructions

Here's a sampling of some of our favorites:

Whole Wheat Carrot Zucchini Cake

{made with applesauce}

Baked Vegetable Sandwiches

Fruit Parfaits

Penne with Broccoli and Turkey Sausage

{uses a white bean "Alfredo" sauce}

Zucchini, Carrot and Black Bean Quesadillas

Each week, I share recipes, our menu plan, and have an opportunity for you to link up the delicious recipes you've bookmarked each week in Friday Favorite Finds!  Occasionally, there's a kitchen tip or two, and recipes pulled out from the archives.  

As we've learned to cook our foods from scratch, Frog Prince and I have discovered a joy in cooking food for ourselves and for others.  God has showed me, especially, how to find joy in caring for my family by making wholesome, healthy foods from simple ingredients that nourish my family. By sharing our recipes with you, it's our hope that you might find joy in your kitchen too!

Do you like to cook?  What are your favorite and least favorite foods or meals to make?  I'd love to learn more about you and your cooking experiences whether you're just stopping by today or have been reading along here for a few weeks or a few years!

Meal Planning 101

The Happy Housewife has been hosting a menu planning challenge over the past week or so, and it's not too late to join!

If you've been thinking about trying your hand at menu planning, I highly recommend reading over her posts on how to get started. Her first post goes over why she menu plans, and her second post gives you some great resources to start menu planning.

And, she's great at keeping you accountable too! She's had two challenges thus far....

1) Create a list of 10 of your families favorite meals.

and,

2) Add 5 more meals to that list, plus a list of side dishes (fruits/veggies) your family enjoys.


Frog Prince and I have been meal planning (with weekly accountability through Organizing Junkie's Menu Planning Monday) for almost a full year now, and I don't think we'll ever go back to not planning. You can read more about why we meal plan, and how we do it here.

Since I already have created a top-10 list of sorts, I'm jumping in this week with 5 more meals, and side dishes. My five additional meals are "fall-themed" as this season quickly approaches.

5 (okay 7) Additional Favorites

Chicken Stew



Lucy's AMAZING Chili



Meatball Tortellini Soup

Zucchini, Carrot and Black Bean Quesadillas



Crockpot Broccoli Beef



Unstuffed Pepper Skillet



Crockpot Chicken Parmesan





Side Dishes we love

Roasted Asparagus



Vegetable Medley



Herbed Green Beans



Sauteed Zucchini

Baked Potatoes

Buca Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Potato Fries



Sweet Potato Fries



Zesty Potatoes

Broccoli (especially roasted)

Cauliflower

Apple-y Carrots

Carrots, steamed

Corn on the cob

Mixed Veggies -either mixed or separate (peas, corn, carrots, green beans)

Sauteed Mushrooms

Squash (Acorn/Spaghetti)

Herbed veggies (red, yellow bell pepper, broccoli, carrots, with olive oil and herbs.)

Beans (I love 'em... we're working on Froggy)

Rice (brown, wild)

Blueberries

Cherries

Applesauce

Pineapple


What are your favorite side dishes?
For more ideas, check out Menu Planning 101 at the Happy Housewife!

About Finding Joy in My Kitchen

My paternal grandmother raised 9 children.  I hear stories that she used to bake more than 10 loaves of bread at a time. She and my grandfather butchered their own cows and chickens, made their own pickles and grew all their vegetables and grains.  

I'm not like that.  

I work full time outside of the home, teaching college kids about plants, food and the basics of biology.  My husband works full time too, and although we have a garden, I can't imagine having cows and chickens in our backyard.  Did I mention I'm not an animal person?  Hence why I study plants.  

I did inherit (whether by genes or default) my love of cooking and baking from my mom and grandmothers.  All three of these amazing women were committed to feeding their families wholesome meals -- one did it in record time as kids were running in and out, one did it while working full time outside of the home, and one did it while working at home.   

To do just that requires simple ingredients; you know, the ones you always have on hand.  Not some one-time-use spice or herb that requires an extra trip to the store and never gets used again.  What do I use capers for again?  

And, that's my goal.  Frog Prince and I want to feed our family meals that are as much from scratch as possible.  We believe in good food, and good food that is easy to make!  

About Us

I (SnoWhite) have been married to the love of my life -- my Frog Prince -- since 2007.  Since then we've:

• Completed our PhDs
• Acquired real jobs
• Moved 600 miles 
• Bought our first house, & 
• Started gardening

We picked up cooking as a hobby during graduate school, motivated to find a way to manage my food allergy while cooking healthy, easy meals on a budget.  We started with an apple pie {not the easiest place to start, but, alas, that's where we began} and from there we quickly learned that cooking from scratch was not only easy but it was fun too.

About Finding Joy in My Kitchen

I was standing in the bread aisle of Meijer -- 600 miles away from home.  

As I picked up and read the label for each loaf of bread made with some type of whole grain they all contained the same warning about being processed with, made on equipment with or actually containing nuts.  Urg.  

Nearly in tears - I called my mom.

"Mom.... how do you make bread?"

It was either that, or a loaf of Wonder Bread.  

I've never been a white bread girl - I've loved my whole grains and certainly have a love for food.  But that moment in the grocery store took my cooking to a whole other level.  I had to rely on what I learned from my mom and start figuring out how to cook on my own.  

When I had success with a recipe, I'd call my mom to tell her all about it.  After a few weeks of calling her to see if she'd actually tried the recipe I had sent to her, she confessed that she needed to see a picture of the finished recipe before she would try it.  

Turns out, she's not the only one who likes seeing photos of what they are aspiring to make.

I decided to start Finding Joy in My Kitchen during our first year of marriage -- just for my mom.  I began posting recipes we tried, complete with step-by-step photos of the food.  And, you know what?  She started making some of our recipes.  And you did too!

Finding Joy in My Kitchen started as as a place to document our cooking journey; now, it's a ministry to you.  God has taught us much about using the food resources He's given to us to make wise and healthy food choices, and we've found that eating well and cooking from scratch is fun and enjoyable!  

It is our hope that as you browse and try these recipes that you too will find joy in cooking food for your family too!