Something Funky is going on

I have never really LOVED to cook. Loved to bake but not cooking. And cleaning up after cooking and baking is dreaded. So when we decided to build our house. I knew that cooking wouldn't be stellar during those months(now years)...but I didn't know that it would totally suck as much as it has. It was 16 months of not living in my own house and almost 2 months till I had a full functioning kitchen in our house...so 18 months of cooking with a griddle and microwave. We lived off a lot of frozen pizza, toquitos, popcorn chicken and hotdogs. And lots of mac & cheese, I mean cases of it.

So here we are. Almost 2 years since we started building. Plainly put... I am in a funk, a big, huge, ginormous cooking funk. The thought of it makes me want to curl up in my bed and cry. I look through cookbooks and everything sounds so good. Especially when I go through our new church cookbook, oh man it all sounds so good. So what are we eating? Frozen pizzas and toquitos and chicken noodle soup( yup I switched it up a bit). I hasn't helped that Trevor has been gone for the last 3 weeks. You know how you can get away with cooking a lot less when your husband isn't around and it's just you and the kids.

So last week I was grocery shopping with the kids, which usually doesn't happen anymore because they are both in school when I go to the city. But this time they were with me. My son spotted the sweet potatoes. Many moons ago I used to make sweet potato french fries, both my kids loved them. He asked if I could make those some time. Then I also remembered seeing a recipe for Roasted pepper and sweet potato soup on the website, "Mennonite Girls can cook". It looked so good. So I thought I would buy 1 sweet potato for soup and 1 for french fries. Then I bought 2 huge pepperoni chubs for homemade pizza. I figured lets start simple.

So when I got home my plan for the week was to make home made pizza shells and then this soup I had seen. My mom had given me her old meat slicer. It is a manual one and the suction cups don't stick anymore, but it worked and I sliced up the meat. I had that ready to go in the freezer. Well the pizza got made and eaten in the next 2 days. The soup got put off for a bit. I decided that I would make it for sunday and have it ready to go in the crockpot for when we got home after church. I would also make fresh biscuits as well (my sister-in-law had us down for lunch and she had made these awesome soups and biscuits).

Saturday rolls around. I roast the peppers and sweet potatoes and realize I need both potatoes I had bought for soup . So I promised to buy more for fries this week. I go to get my blender to puree the pepper/potato mixture. Can't find it anywhere! I finally phoned a friend and borrowed one. The soup was ready to go for tomorrow, I even had it in the crockpot in the fridge ready to go. I got so inspired I made 2 batches of chocolate chip cookies yet. That took so much out of me I needed a nap by 2 pm.

Sunday morning rolls around. I get my crockpot ready to go all I needed to do was turn it on and let it simmer till we got home. I put out the shortening to warm up so I could quickly make my biscuits. As I am sitting in church I realize I didn't turn my crockpot on. It was such a rush to get to church I forgot. I felt fairly defeated at that moment. I seriously wanted to cry. Then I thought about it... I would just get my big pot out and finish it on the stove top while the biscuits bake. We're still good.

So I get home and get the soup boiling on the stove and make the biscuits. We sit down to eat. Everyone takes a full bowl of soup. With the silence I could immediately tell 50% of the people at the table don't really like it. Trevor goes to get salt, I can handle that, it did need more salt anyways. And he loads up on crackers. My son has taken a few small spoonfuls and then plays with his spoon. Now I should mention that I did warn everyone I didn't want to hear any complaints. He takes a biscuit. And says they are really good. My daughter says she likes it but the biscuits were her favorite. Well I liked it! I knew I would be stretching my family. I mean for pete sake, my husband ate alligator on his trip to Chicago, I figured sweet potato isn't a stretch. We all ate calamari before Christmas.

But I did feel a great sense of accomplishment. Nothing was frozen or pre-cooked. I made everything we ate!

Can you guess who's bowl of soup after the meal is who's?

I consider this a small victory in my huge battle of cooking. My plan for the week is to try buns, for the second time in my life and corn chowder, something I KNOW my husband likes. I also want to get back to having fish once a week. Amazingly enough everyone in our family eats salmon and sole.

So if anyone wants to try roasted pepper and sweet potato soup...I have lots...in the freezer!