Farmer's Markets

My coworkers and I discovered a small farmer's market in town last weekend. Not only was it a fun adventure, the vegetables were so cheap! Nothing beats fresh fruit and veggies and when you add that we found kale for $1 a bunch, that just makes it even better! So naturally we went back this weekend. I was able to get 2 bunches of kale and 2 cucumbers for $3. I am pretty sure that would have easily been at least $6-8 at the grocery store!

Eating healthy is oftentimes hard, especially when we are balancing life, school, work, family, friends, and anything else that we might have going on - and you aren't the only one! Everyone has the exact same problem! Take an hour out of your crazy life to do something easy, relaxing, and fun. A farmer's market is an easy way to get a lot of shopping done quickly and cheaply. It's a fun way to eat healthy on a budget, AND it supports your local farmers. Keep it local and support your home economy! We even walked in the rain and so added a little bit of exercise and friends into our day.

Preserving Fresh Basil

As promised, I have attempted to preserve basil! I found the idea for this on Pinterest and the link took me to redheadcandecorate.com where the whole recipe is told. Essentially, there is a lot of salt involved and it results in some infused olive oil (but that is the short version). I had looked into this because my mom  has so many basil plants that she is slowly killing us with fresh pesto. Now, I know that I should definitely NOT complain about fresh pesto, but seriously, there is too much of it in my life right now, and I don't even live at home.

I decided to try this myself partly because I'm curious and partly because I have about three basil plants that I've nurtured from seeds, and more importantly, have not killed. Now these three little plants are still so small that I am trying to see if harvesting some of the leaves will actually make them grow bigger! (I also was slightly impatient and really wanted a tiny harvest.) So forgive the very tiny basil leaves that are currently soaking in some olive oil in my fridge. If I remember, I will post an update about how well this works! It seems to me that it should work just fine...

Working Girl Cooking

Every one who has ever cooked with me knows that I should have my own sitcom. It would be entitled "The Adventures of Cooking with Sean" or something along those lines. Most of my concoctions work out pretty well in the end so my roommates have forgiven the slightly overcooked vegetables and the incessant fire alarm. At least it tastes good, right?

Well I have this friend who sells Wildtree spices and part of the selling parties are these "freezer meals" So my roommates and I did this awhile back - where you put everything for a meal in a gallon freezer bag and, well, freeze it. Of course at the time we were not quite sure what to do with these so absolutely everything went into the CrockPot, whether it was supposed to or not.

I recently started a new job and wanted to have home-cooked meals for dinners and lunches and so I decided to repeat the experiment, but properly this time. So mostly I marinated various meats and froze those. I turned 3 pounds of hamburger into various flavored hamburger patties, and I thought I would attempt to make one thing that was legitimately supposed to go into the CrockPot. So I tried to make this Slow Cooker Chipolte Lime Chicken, sounds like a good idea, right? I mean it has "slow cooker" in the name! Well if you read the recipe, which I only scanned because that's how I roll, things like the avocados were supposed to be toppers, and things like the rice were supposed to be cooked separately and in perfect TV show fashion, I stuck the entire thing into the slow cooker for about 8 hours.

Now, I have another bag in the freezer (I split the recipe in half), and I think I will make the rice separately next time. Everything was cooked really nicely, but the rice had really turned to mush which upon reheating the left overs was even more mushy - which I didn't think was possible.

So Sean's cooking advice #1 (on this blog), do not put rice in the slow cooker for 8 hours - it will turn to mush.

Stay tuned, I may attempt to preserve fresh basil in the future...