Tag Archives: home grown herbs

It was a nice week spent away with the family and visiting in Charlotte. The weather was great and we had a fun time hanging out with everyone and seeing all the nieces and nephews and how big they have become. I didn’t get a chance to any blogging at all while I was gone since I left my computer at home, but I did help with some cooking, making my spaghetti and meatballs, my corned beef in the oven, and my corned beef hash for breakfast on Easter morning. So now it’s back home and back to the real world of cooking every day. I didn’t have a meal plan for this week already, so I am working on one today and hope to have that tomorrow to post.

I thought for today I would go over some things I am planning to do for the house and the kitchen to make things a little easier for us around here, and maybe give you some ideas too. I have been receiving some requests for ideas and recipes to post, and I really do pay attention to them and hope to post them on here soon. I did have a request for some easy party appetizers and dips, a request on how to make some roast beef with au jus (which I hope to do this weekend) and a few other odds and ends that I’ll be writing about it.

I am planning a few things in the house to hopefully make cooking a little better and also save us some money in the process. I started growing my own herbs at home in the hopes of using more fresh herbs in my cooking. WE don’t have a lot of space since we live in a condo, but we do live on the bottom floor and have a small patch of earth in the back that we can plant in, so I am going to put some herbs there. For now, I have growing in the house some basil, oregano, parsley, mint and thyme. I have used some of the mint and thyme already since I bought them when they were further along as plants and it was great. I have looked into getting a couple of other herb boxes so I can start some things out and move them outside. I just want to get herbs that I use a lot on cooking (although Sean wants me to grow some watermelon :)).

Another thing I am looking into is getting a bread maker. We seem to go through a lot of bread in this house and I think if I had the bread maker I would get good use out of it. I just don’t have the space to work with dough like I would like to since we only have one small counter to use in our kitchen, but I do have the space for a bread maker. I have been doing some research online to see what might be best and so far the one that seems to look good is the Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme 2-Pound-Loaf Breadmaker. It seems to be the size I like and would do everything I want it to do and more.

We are also looking into getting a kitchen island cart. We have some room in our dining room for something like this and it would give us some needed storage space and provide us with some extra butcher block cutting room for counter space. We have done a lot of research on this one but haven’t really found one to fit nicely in the space we have.

Lastly, we are looking into making some dietary changes in our lives that will change our menus a little. Everyone is always trying to lose some weight and having foot problems caused by my illness has made exercise difficult, if not impossible, so it has become more important to watch what I eat. I think we need to introduce more fruits and vegetables in our diet, eliminate some carbs and cut back more on the red meat, so you’ll probably see more dinner recipes here that try to do that, along with recipes that I really want to try or really like (I can’t just give up everything!).

Tomorrow I hope to have our menu plan for the rest of the week laid out. I do know that I’ll be making Sloppy Joes for dinner tomorrow as a request of Michelle’s, so look for that in tomorrow’s blog. If anyone has any suggestions for herbs to grow, bread makers to look at, kitchen carts they like or menu suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment and pass them along. Until tomorrow, enjoy your evening and enjoy your meal!