New Cookbook!

I love to cook. I don't have a lot of time to do it, but when I do, I really enjoy it. Most of the time when I cook a meal, it's on the weekends when I have more time. Last weekend, I cooked barbecue pork in my crock-pot because Roman brought me some awesome barbecue sauce from his recent trip to Memphis.

The crock-pot recipes I have feed an army, so we had friends over to help us eat it all (Molly, Jason and Xavier). I also made cornbread for the first time. I was amazes at how easy it was to make! I made it from a recipe out of the cookbook that Molly gave me for Christmas. The book was on my amazon.com wishlist because Jackie recommended it to me. And I LOVE it. I read it periodically and learn more and more about cooking technique. Something I never learned growing up.

I admit that I love reading recipes as much as (or more than) I like to cook. I recently went to Half-Price Books and hit the jackpot. I found Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill cookbook for $10 and Nigella Lawson's book, "Nigella Bites" for $10. I think that both of them are incredibly talented, and I was so excited at my find.

We were visiting family today, and during the drive, I was able to finally read Nigella Bites. I love her style! I've seen her shows on Food Network, but this is the first cookbook of hers I've owned. It definitely won't be the last. Her writing style is so friendly, and her recipes are so easy and yummy-sounding. I can't WAIT to try them!

Simply said, I'd highly recommend this cookbook to anyone who likes to cook. I'll eventually write more about her recipes that I try. But if you're anything like me and are a cookbook junkie more than you even cook, this is one to get!

"I Have the Blue One?"

I had so much fun coloring Easter eggs yesterday with Xavier and his mom & dad (Molly & jason). Anyone that knows Xavier remembers his "blue" phase from about two years ago. No, he wasn't sad, rather everything to him was the color blue!

"What color is that [red] baloon, Xavier?"

"Boo."

"What color is the grass?"

"Boo."

"What color is your daddy's hair?"

Trick question. Daddy doesn't have any hair. But it was still, always to him, boo.

Xavier still likes his blue, and these days, he's added Dash and bowling to his favorite things. So yesterday, it came as no surprise that he really wanted to hold that blue egg before it was dry.

"I have the blue one? I have the blue one? I have the blue one?" he said repeatedly as soon-to-be-four-year-olds will when they think they're not being heard. He got so upset when he was told no and stared so longingly at that egg.

I think he finally got over it and moved on when he saw his mom blow-drying a plastic wrapper around an egg. It was funny to see him with the hair dryer, watching the egg roll all over the table. He laughed and laughed and laughed and finally forgot all about that blue egg.

My birds.

Roman tries to tell me they're not MY birds, but I'm not havin' any of that. They dine at the outdoor table I set for them. They're my guests who leave empty sunflower seed shells all over my back yard. And that's ok - they need to eat! Because of all that snow we were getting, I was worried about them, so I kept their bellies full. And took lots of pictures with my new lens - the one I picked up at B&H Photo in New York a couple weeks ago..

Photo of the Week

Man, we sure had a lot of snow last week.