Noelle likes Good Food

My seedlings are doing well! In addition to my original batch of seedlings, I planted a whole flat of sugar snap pea seeds a week and a half ago. I had success with them last fall, but it got too cold before they could produce any peas. So, I am trying again this spring and wanted to give them a head start inside. They are doing great! I started by soaking the seeds in filtered water for 48 hours, and changed the water twice a day. I have soaked all my seeds (beside the tiny lettuce seeds) in water and it really makes a difference in speeding up germination time!  I put the lid on the tray while they were sprouting to trap in moisture and set it by the window. It only took three days for them to sprout!  This photo was taken yesterday. They sprouted last weekend and have already grown so much. The plants seem really hardy and I can't wait to get them in the ground!  I took this picture today and it seems they grew an inch overnight...

I had no clue what I was going to make for lunch on Sunday. I hadn't been grocery shopping in over two weeks and the empty shelves in my fridge were there to prove it.  I had a few old potatoes, some leftover sausage from making pizza a few nights ago, some frozen peas I had packed in my lunch the day before and never ate, 1 small zucchini, and some beef broth I made a couple days ago.  The remnants of my bare refrigerator aligned perfectly. I was going to make soup! So, I made soup and it was delicious. While we were eating it, Chris kept saying how good it was and that the seasoning was perfect. That was a big deal because he doesn't even like soup! I thought it was delicious as well. We ate the soup for 3 meals and I was sad when it was gone. I definitely need to make this again soon. When I made it, I just threw a bunch of stuff into the pot and tasted as I went. I tried to remember everything and give approximate measurements to write down a recipe. The bes...

Over the past year I have been slowly adding to my list of food items that I make at home instead of buy at the store. With rare exceptions, I now make my own pizza dough, pesto sauce, bread, corn and flour tortillas, biscuits, salad dressing, sauerkraut , salsa,  water kefir , and enchilada sauce . This has been a long slow process and one I will continue for years to come. For me, I have found a lot of success in tackling one thing at a time, mastering a technique or recipe, and adopting it into my kitchen routine before I try something new. It has allowed me to stay consistent and keep my time in the kitchen manageable.  This brings me to ketchup. I have been wanting to make my own ketchup for years, and just never got around to it. I am more of a mustard girl and I don't eat Heinz ketchup so it wasn't a big deal. Around the same time that we ran out of ketchup, I opened one of the big cans of tomato paste from Costco. It seems fate would have it that I make ketchup. S...