Starting is the hardest part (recipe)

The birth of this blog is the result of watching Julie and Julia and cooking Mother-in-law Potato Soup.  I have thought about blogging a lot.  But I have nothing to say really.  Or maybe it's that I have nothing to say that anyone would care to read.

Anyway, if you haven't watched Julie and Julia, it's really good!  Julie loves cooking and decides to cook her way through a book by Julia Child in 1 year and blog about her adventures.  Intertwined with her story are glimpses of the life of Julia Child and how she came to write the cookbook and have it published.  I really enjoyed it and it inspired me to try new recipes.

How did the Potato Soup come into the mix, you ask?  A few days later I was making Potato Soup for my family, just as I have a thousand times before, and I lifted the lid off the pot and sniffed...and I was instantly transported to a place I had never been before.  Neither here nor there, but somewhere between now and then.  A place in time past.  A place where I could create.  A safe place where I felt not only comfortable, but very much "at home".  And that's when I realized it.  I need, more than ever before, to cook REAL food!  To start with ingredients that don't come from a box unless I can pronounce their (preferably very short) ingredient list.  It's not easy and it takes time (but hey, so does typing with one hand while feeding a baby), but it's SO worth it for the health of my family.

In thinking about the soup, I was thinking about my mother-in-law.  She really was a wonderful woman who loved the Lord and did her best to serve Him daily.  I still miss her.  She had a hard life.  I doubt many of us lose our father at the age of 7 and then are sent (by our mother) away to a foreign land just 9 years later.  But she made the best of it.  And I need to make the best of the life I have been given.

The last reason I started this blog is because I have been in search of ways to live authentically.  Eating REAL food, using natural healing methods,using cloth diapers, doing things the way they were meant to be done instead of accepting that "that's just the way we do it nowadays".  Don't misunderstand me, I'm not a total health-nut or a wacky environmentalist or anything!  I just believe things were created to be done a certain way and in trying to "perfect" that way, we have really screwed some of it up.  I think we have screwed up how we relate to God as well.  We have so many "methods" and so many "plans" and "formulas" that can become so fake.  It's time to have a REAL, AUTHENTIC relationship with Him!  One that allows for failure and grace.  One that shows how great our God is and how small and insignificant I am.

So, there you go.  A blog has been born :)  And you are here to witness it's conception.  Congratulations!


Mother-In-Law Potato Soup
Named so because it has been passed from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law for at least a couple generations, and I hope to continue it someday :)

(in my 8 qt stock pot I combine:)
1/2 full of potatoes, peeled and chopped
water to 1" above the potatoes
Salt, start with probably a teaspoon
a few dashes of pepper
2 bay leaves
2-3 slices of frozen Jewish Rye bread (from the bakery in Berkley, MI)
2 strips of bacon cut in little pieces, sauteed with:
1/2 an onion chopped finely

Let all that simmer for probably 45 minutes, until potatoes are super tender and mashable.
Mash with a potato masher or your electric mixer.  I do NOT recommend a stick blender unless you remove the bay leaves first (add them back in when you're done blending).
Remove a couple cups of the soup to a large bowl.  Temper in (using a whisk) close to 16 oz reduced fat sour cream.
TASTE!  This is the non-scientific part.  Taste it to see if you need more salt (you probably will) or sour cream.  Continue adding either one and stirring and tasting until it tastes oh-so-delightful.
Add 2 T chopped fresh (or dried) parsley and stir.

Pancakes
mix together until smooth:
8 eggs
3 C flour mixed with 1 tsp baking soda
dash salt
2 C water
2 C milk
1 T sugar

Butter a hot skillet (or three if you can devote your undivided attention to watching all of them at once).  Put 1/3 C batter in the skillet and tilt to cover the bottom.  It should be a little thicker than crepes (which are paper-thin).  When they are just dry on top and starting to brown around the edges, flip them carefully.
I find it easiest to tear paper towel off the roll and have a STACK of it waiting to place in between the pancakes as they come out of the skillet.  I will warn you, this will make more than you can eat in one sitting!  This makes more than my family of 7 can eat in one sitting!  But I'm sure they can be frozen and used later as well :)
To serve: The "classic" way is to place a tablespoon of applesauce on the pancake and roll up.  MY way is to just roll up and dip in my soup.  YUM!

Happy cooking!

Just Beginning

Wow!  Writing the first post of a blog is harder than I ever thought!  My first intention was to make this blog about food and cooking, since I have been trying to make more "real" food from scratch.  But then I was thinking about all the other areas of life that need to be "real".  Not only physical, but relational and spiritual as well.  And in the end, I think I'm just a simple mom trying to be frugal with my money, my time and my life and just trying to be authentic in every area.  You'll likely see a hodge-podge of different postings.  (Or maybe this will be my only one, who knows!)

So, won't you join me on this adventure of authenticity?  Hopefully writing this blog won't make me neglect "real life", but instead help me dive head first into it and enjoy all it has to offer.

~S~