Cold weather cooking and some upcoming plans

It’s been weeks since I have posted here, so hello again. Welcome back to my little corner of the food blogging world. My cooking has been kind of sad lately, what with the seasonal changes. Certain times of year are more difficult than others, wouldn’t you agree? I am, however, looking forward to the holiday season and whipping up some traditional and not-so-traditional foods while the snow falls outside. (And that snow will probably start falling soon…we got some last weekend already, though it didn’t actually stick to the ground.)

While I love the freshness of summer cooking, and the whole cooking and eating outdoors aspect of the warmer months, I’m just as excited about the cold weather cooking. Soups, breads, oven roasted vegetables, and casseroles, oh my! Maybe not casseroles so much…but my cast iron skillet will be getting tons of use over the next six months.

One of my plans for this winter is to attempt to cook some classic recipes, be they American or otherwise. I have this real problem where I cannot strictly stick to a recipe as written, so this will actually be a true challenge for me! If you have any suggestions on something I ought to try, do please pass it on.

Another big food area in my life is cheese. Hello, I’m in Wisconsin and married to a milk hauler who also worked in a cheese factory when he was in high school…not to mention we currently live next door to a cheese factory. There are a lot of them. And they make a lot of different cheeses. So, I’ve decided to do a feature on the occasional Friday where I showcase a cheese along with food pairings and/or a recipe.

So, here’s a loose idea of what you’ll see coming up on the blog over the next few months (at least):

Fromage Fridays: This will be my series of cheese-centric posts. How very…cheesy. I think I’m so funny.

Classic Cooking: These will be some of my regular Wednesday posts, probably once a month or so, where I cook something that has been deemed “classic” for whatever reason.

Ingredient Showcase: I really enjoy trying weird ingredients from around the world, so there will almost definitely be some posts centered around stuff like this. (For example, I recently got some dried squid from Japan and I’m slightly stumped on how I want to use it, but I’ll figure it out!)

My regular weekly blog posts will still show up, and not always with a theme. For now, though, I apologize for my absence and I’ll be back next week!

A tornado hit us yesterday

Even the best-laid plans go awry. This time it wasn’t my forgetfulness or anything…it was a freight train coming through town. Or rather, a tornado. That’s not supposed to happen here. Well, I mean, I know it does, but I had literally been talking with my sister a couple days ago about how tornadoes don’t happen and then one did around 4:30 pm yesterday. It all happened so fast. Our house is fine, there’s just trees down all over the darn place. Apparently we were the worst hit too. And we’ve been without power for like 18 hours now so I’m at the library (on my day off, haha) writing this.

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I had been planning on cooking trout and white beans for dinner last night, but that definitely did not happen. We ate cucumbers and drank whiskey in the dark, haha. And percolated coffee for my husband over our little gas grill at 1 am when he had to get ready for work. I do love percolated coffee though. Hopefully I can make that trout tonight!

I do, however, have something food related to share with you. I recently got this simmer sauce from India in a foodie box called Try the World, and it said on the packet it could be used for any meat, seafood, or vegetables. It seemed like a good way to use up bits of things, so I picked salmon, a shallot, green beans, and a few cherry tomatoes. It was pretty delicious served over basmati rice, and I’m definitely gonna have to find it in store or online somewhere!