Poke

My last post (from Christmastime!) seems so out of place at the top of my blog now that spring is on the way. It's definitely time to poke the blog and let you know I'm still more or less here! Nothing is wrong, just keeping busy and focused more on my fitness lately and therefore keeping up with my cycling blog quite a bit more. Although there hasn't been much on the crafting front, there has been a lot of another of my hobbies: cooking. I guess all that exercising is making me hungry and I think home cooking is the BEST!

This beef stew, with cocoa as a surprising ingredient, has become a winter staple ever since I saw it in a Rachel Ray magazine in Oct, 2006.

Probably my favorite food magazine is Everyday Food and the March, 2009 issue has a lot of good ideas.

This penne casserole with chicken, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes will be a new regular for us. When you make it, you freeze half of it to bake at a later time! Shown right out of the oven:

And hot and ready to eat:

Also from the above issue, I've made the smoky chipotle beef taco filling, shown just shredded here. It was one of those things that just get better as leftovers. Sorry not to show it in the soft wraps, they got eaten up too fast.

The tacos were good with a side of corn and one of my favorite foods, avocado.

I could probably eat guacamole every day! A vat(!) of my own version:

That's just a sampling of the late winter foods I've been cooking. Believe it or not, I've had a jump start on summer with a little grilling too. There may have still been snow, but the air temperature wasn't too bad! I am dreaming of summer days spent relaxing outside in the yard, but first we must get through mud season and those of you with dogs know how fun that is...

PS: As well as biking, there are some dog pics on the cycling blog. I'll just send you there instead of posting twice!
PSPS: I'm playing around with updating the look of the blog a little.

Best!