I’ve been spending more time in the kitchen, leaning and tweaking recipes to match our eating style.

Why learn?

I’ve never been very good in the kitchen. I’ve always had a better cook in the house so there wasn’t really a reason for me to get in the way. I got pretty good at cleaning up afterwards, instead.

Baking beats cooking

When we owned a bed and breakfast, I learned to make dishes to serve several people at once. That works great if you are feeding a lot of people. When there are only two in the house, though, it might be less practical.

I also did a lot of baking at the bed and breakfast and I really liked baking. Not only breakfast treats; I baked a few birthday cakes too. They weren’t anything I could sell or do professionally, but they tasted great and looked pretty okay! I also perfected a couple of cookie recipes. I watched a lot of Alton Brown and when he had his chocolate chip cookie episode I devoured it. Like, over and over. He made the cookies three ways: puffy, thin, and chewy.

Then I went to the kitchen and started practicing. I was looking for a combination of puffy and chewy. Like a science experiment, I practiced until I got what I wanted.

One year, I decided to show off some of my baking (and scientist?) skills at the County Fair. I baked a batch of my Razzamataz Cookies and entered them. I won a blue ribbon!

Now, of course, with two people in the house both trying to lose weight, that recipe is getting dusty along with all the other sweet concoctions I enjoyed so much. Sigh. Someday.

OK, enough reminiscing about my eat-anything days. Back to real life.

I’ll just wait over here

Since I no longer bake up a storm, I didn’t spend much time in the kitchen after we sold the bed and breakfast. Tony is a great cook, so I let him handle that for the most part. I have a few dishes that I knew I could do well, and I made those on occasion. Super easy meals (like pulling meat off a pre-roasted chicken) was manageable. I just never felt like I needed to learn a lot because Tony kept me fed. And, I still clean up when he cooks so it works out well.

Dinner Bell

Currently Tony has a much larger at-the-computer work load than I have. So I try to take on other tasks, and leave him alone in his office.

Also, I found that I do like learning new recipes. And even playing a little bit to make them more appropriate to what we like to eat and what fits in our eating style.

Eating plan aside

This probably will not come as a big surprise to anyone, but it’s a lot easier to stay on-plan by cooking at home instead of going to restaurants all the time. Not only can I have better control what goes into our food, I’m also not tempted “just this once” to eat something I shouldn’t be eating. When we stay home, I won’t be tempted because we only keep food in the house that we should be eating.

Now, when we travel and are in an area with some local specialty, I’m bound to check out the local fare. Though, we spend way too much time in Amish Country for me to keep using that excuse. But man, those Amish crack donuts though…

Oops

Oh, sorry. Back to our healthy kitchen.

Admittedly, Tony eats a bit differently than I do. But that’s ok. We plan the main meal around both of our tastes, then maybe add on a little something for him and a little something for me.

All that is to say, I’ve been doing more of the cooking lately. And I like it. And Tony likes it. Both the time savings, and the actually yummy food I’ve managed to whip up.

What I look for in a recipe

So here is what I look for when I am planning to make dinner:

• I want a protein-rich meal. Although I don’t follow a keto diet, I look for keto-friendly recipes because those fit into my eating style as well.

• I want something that’s fairly easy to prepare. I am just building my skills, after all, so I am not ready for anything too complicated.

• I want simple preparation also because every meal I make I want to be able to also make it in the RV. Like everyone, we have limited space in the RV kitchen so I look for recipes that don’t take a mile of countertop to prepare. Ideally, a recipe I cook in the air fryer at home will translate well to cooking in cast iron in the RV oven. Why don’t I just practice with the oven at home? Well, because we don’t have one. Well, we do have a convection microwave but even if my cast iron would fit in there, I’m not certain it’s a good idea to use cast iron in the microwave. It just feels wrong.

• I want a lot of protein and vegetables. Which is tough, because I’m not really good at eating my veggies. I’m getting better though, by finding recipes that encourage the use of new-to-us vegetables. On the other hand, I often run past Tony the idea of substituting a vegetable we know we like in place of something new and scary.

A few of my recent successes are posted on our recipe page. I try to mix up the recipes on that page, so y’all don’t get annoyed with my “keto-friendly” posts. Those other recipes mostly come from friends that share with me. For example, I may not make a dark rum pecan pie, but when I’m camping with Christine and she makes one, you bet I’ll take a little piece. For research purposes, you understand.

Bonus points

I do, however, plan to bring back weekly pizza night now that I’ve practiced making chicken-crust pizza.

And I think what Tony really likes is that sometimes I even clean up my own messes.

SOME OF OUR FAVORITE RECIPES: