Noelle likes Good Food

A picture of Chris and I on Easter Sunday last week :). We had a wonderful Easter weekend visiting my family on Saturday and Chris' family on Sunday. I LOVE being around my families! So, the topic for this post is SOURDOUGH! A few weeks ago I captured 'wild yeast' in my kitchen and created my very own living sourdough starter. It sounds more exciting than how the actual process went down, but the outcome of a happy and bubbly starter was quite the happy occasion. Basically, I stirred together flour and water every 12 hours, and by the 5th day I had a bubbling starter ready to be used in baking.  I have to say upfront that the secret to my success in making all of these sourdough recipes is the Sourdough A to Z e-book that I purchased from the people at GNOWFGLINS . It is $20, which may seem pricey for an e-book, but it is over 150 pages long and is unbelievably comprehensive. It has information about starting your own starter, a long list of resources and reci...

I know this post is a major departure from talking about plants and recipes. But, I am in a Human Anatomy and Physiology class this semester and we have been learning about some really interesting stuff. Today I wanted to share with you what I have been learning about the kidneys. I hope you find it interesting and it might even give you motivation to drink more water :). The kidneys are an incredible organ that are involved in many different physiological processes in the body. They are part of the Urinary System and besides filtering fluids, they also release hormones that stimulate bone marrow to synthesize blood, and they function in directly and indirectly controlling blood pressure. Today we will talk about how the kidneys control chronic low blood pressure. The filtering mechanism of the kidney is  driven by blood pressure. So, proper pressure is very important for them to function properly. Water contributes to blood pressure so when we don't have enough water in our bo...

Well, my relationship with my plants has been rocky for the past several weeks. I can't blame it on them though. I have made some major mistakes and I will tell you all about it so you can learn from mine.   I planted most of these sugar snap pea beauties back in the end of February. The weather was nice and I felt hopeful! However, those few days of nice weather were followed by a major a cold snap and they all died.  These didn't get planted the first time around. I waited a few more weeks before putting them out hoping they would fare better. I planted these 2 weeks ago when the weather was nice. The same thing happened though, those few days of nice weather were followed by a cold, windy, icy cold snap and all but 2 or 3 died. I am really rooting for the 3 plants that survived and hope to get at least one delicious snap pea for all my hard work.  2 and half weeks ago I planted all my summer crop seeds. However, to my deep dismay when some of them...

Well you see... one of my sisters got married in June last year. It was a beautiful event! I made her cake, with the help of my Aunt Pam and twin sister Nicole. I wrote this post as a draft last summer and forgot about it until tonight. Oops.  I didn't get any pictures of the process myself, but my sister-in-law Kat graciously sent me some of the gorgeous pictures she took! Kat also recently started her own blog Voyages des Joie where she writes about the wonderful creations she invents in her kitchen. I must say, all her recipes look absolutely delicious! So, without further ado, here are pictures of the cake! My twin sister Nicole, and I baking the cakes. We had a blast working on it together. The reception. My Dad figured out a way to put a live tree in the auditorium, and hang japanese lanterns from the ceiling. The atmosphere was truly magical!  The cake had 4 tiers, 2 chocolate and 2 vanilla. It was torted and filled with raspberry filling...

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...