What's Cookin'?

I realized that now that I don't go anywhere for work again until September, my blog posts are probably going to be considerably less exciting. This summer I have high aspirations of going through my house and getting rid of a lot of stuff. Though I have found that my swamp cooler tends to stop working once we get over 90 degrees and, if this past weekend is any example, I may end up taking a lot of long naps during my free time this summer instead. My parents recently went up to Washington to help clean out my Grandparent's house (they are in an assisted living facility now). They, along with my uncle, ended up getting inspired to clean out their own houses after seeing the amount of junk that someone can accumulate over the years. This, in turn, has inspired me to do the same. I think this will seem less daunting if I just take a room per weekend and do a really good clean sweep of everything in there.

One thing I will definitely be doing more of this summer, since I have more free time, is cooking. I absolutely love to cook and have been recently getting extra excited about it after watching Master Chef and Chopped. Not that I aspire to be a pro, but I would like to expand my capabilities. As of now, I am really awesome at baking and so so at other cooking. I've heard you're good at one or the other but I would like to think I can become really good at both. This week I tried out two new recipes.

The first was for a New England Clam Chowder. I found the recipe on eatingwell.com and it turned out amazing! It's so good and super easy to make. I am trying really hard to cook healthier and, although this recipe wasn't super healthy, it did cut back on the heavy cream quite a bit. I did have to add a bit of salt and pepper for taste, but I was pleasantly surprised at how creamy the broth was considering so little actual cream was actually in it. I can officially stop complaining about how I can't find chowder as good as what I grew up with in Washington, I just have to make it myself.

The second recipe was a healthier version of mac and cheese that substituted winter squash for a lot of the actual cheese sauce. The recipe came from one of my Ellie Krieger cookbooks. She has two cookbooks out and I swear, every recipe I have tried of hers has been fantastic. I would highly recommend picking them up. Anyone who claims to know me, knows that I LOVE mac and cheese. It's definitely my favorite comfort food. Well, this recipe turned out really great. Though, I did find myself wanting a bit more cheese. What can I say? Cheese is definitely my weakness. I did find that adding a bit of fresh parmesan to the top of it, helped a lot though. I think I'd try it again with a few adjustments that might defeat the purpose of a healthy mac and cheese, but again, it substituted low-fat milk for heavy cream at the very least. Sometimes a little adjustment can make all the difference.