to cook or not to cook?

so up until this year i was an oxymoron of sorts. i have a degree in nutrition and i am a registered dietitian but i never cooked. i either didn't have the means to (housesat for a year) or didn't have to (lived with my aunt and uncle for 3 years and she is a gourmet cook so there you go).

the thing is i loved recipes, planning meals, i knew how to cook, i just didn't do it. so when i got married last summer i'll be honest i was a little nervous. luckily i have a husband who loves to cook so with the dozens of cookbooks i own (yes i collect them) we started on our journey.

at first we didn't realize this but after about two months we realized we hadn't made the same recipe twice. so we set a goal for ourself (i'm all about goals) not to cook the same main dish twice our first year of marriage. now this doesn't include breakfast or side dishes but we have been married 9 months and we're on track! we do eat leftovers and we do freeze extra and pull it out on a rainy day, we just don't cook the same recipe twice.

let me tell you it's been so much fun! we are eating healthy, trying to eat local. growing our own herbs, and having a lot of fun together. we've decided that besides our new puppy, cooking might be our only hobby, but we love it!

here are two recent meals we've really liked:

spicy chicken shawarma, pesto whole wheat pasta, and southwest slaw

(who knew what a jicama was?)

delicious!

mushroom-stuffed chicken, short-cut collard greens (minus the bacon), and

honey roasted sweet potatoes

beautiful collards from a local farm and market

a little black dog who prefers to eat collard stems rather than her bone :)

recently we are loving cooking light, ellie krieger (her cookbook is great), alice waters the art of simple food, and blogs of course! so if you cook something good, post it! i still need 3 more months of new recipes :)

fleur de biscuit

lame title, i apologize. last saturday mr. d and i decided to make biscuits. an endeavour i've never been brave enough to embark on (the fact that i grew up in the south and never was taught to make biscuits is another blog for another day).

we decided to use the flying biscuit cafe recipe, my personal favorite, if you are ever in atlanta, go!

we don't have a lot of space in our tiny kitchen so the counter became our workspace. about 27 cups of flour later we had these ready to go in the oven:

i decided it would be fun to make with our fleur de lis cookie cutter. bad idea, you cannot appropriately "flour" a cookie cutter shaped like a fleur de lis. i think here they look more like dinosaurs. however, they turned out pretty well:

definitely resembles a fleur de lis right? well that is not the important part, the fact is they were amazing! being biscuit amateurs we didn't have high expectations, but we agreed, these were some of the best biscuits we've ever had (and we are both from georgia).

the final product! mr. d made his a sandwich, i am a biscuit purist and ate mine all by itself with some honey. they really were delicious.

maple recovering from her surgery wondering why she can't have any

i will share the recipe to those not fortunate to have the cookbook. mind you this resembles nothing my usual cooking light recipes have to offer, but it is a nice splurge every now and then!

a soirée of sorts

in honor of my birthday, and the birthday of another good friend, i decided to host a soiree, dinner party to the laymen. for some reason i wasn't into celebrating my birthday particularly this year but i love food and i love parties, so there you go.

it was also a wonderful opportunity to use the china, silver, and crystal we got for our wedding that have never seen the light of day. i don't want to be one of those people who only uses it on "special occasions." so if you come over to the dunaway household for dinner don't be suprised :) we will probably still use paper napkins and drink out of mardi gras cups, but you will have a nice plate.

i digress. we had a wonderful dinner party with good friends we are blessed with here in nola. not only are these people good friends they are good cooks as well. brie and pear tartlets, gourmet salads, and a lovely dessert involving praline mousse. i made an easy, delicious garlic and herb chicken.

we ate outside in our picturesque courtyard, kind of like on julia & julia when they eat on their roof. i went for the classy, eclectic look with fresh flowers, cloth napkins,but just enough touch of "we just got married and we do with what we have (or borrow)." my friend's china even came to the party so we would have enough.

sadly my camera was on the wrong setting so some of the pictures didn't turn out but here are a few!

yes, my handsome husband wore his tuxedo, with chacos

wonderful friends and great conversation

we try to be classy

pre-soiree

imperfectly returning

hello blog world, i've been missing you. so i did complete my "new thing everday for a year project" i just didn't blog about it (i will finish don't you worry). but then time passed by and i put it off. and put it off. and put it off. if you know me but at all, you know i am a perfectionist...and if it can't be done right it doesn't get done at all. well my blogging friends i bring you a new outlook on life, that life is just more fun lived imperfectly!

really my reason for re-entering the blog world is so i don't seem like a stalker when i'm making comments on all of your blogs. i love blogs. i love writing but more i love reading what other people have to say. reading their stories and sharing in their days, learning new things, and honestly realizing that yes lauren, other people are just like you.

so hello blog world, i'm back, imperfectly and better for it. keeping with tradition i will begin the day after my birthday. i tend to keep those resolutions (albeit not blog about them) instead of new years ones (which i find highly overrated). what will i blog about? new things of course. this will most likely be my new adventures in cooking, gardening, photography, and learning how to decorate 900 sq feet with little to no money and a 5 month lab puppy jumping on your furniture.

so yes, yesterday was my birthday. i celebrated it in style at the grand opening of chick-fil-a! our first free standing unit within 50 miles or so, this is big people! i celebrated with a number 5 of course (kirsten for you) and a brownie a la mode. i left with a baloon and a mini-cow (only given to children but my sweet husband abliged me and asked). afterwards we shopped at target for a wedding present (i have no idea how mini cadbury eggs got into my basket) and at checkout we were given a $5 gift card for no reason! now i call that a good birthday.

so cheers to you 27 and to blogging!

New Thing #254: Sake it To Me

A fun part of this "new thing" project is trying out new restaurants in New Orleans. That is a lot of "news" in one sentence. I went to Sake Cafe uptown for my friend Katie's bachelorette party and it was delicious! Good sushi and fun drinks, I had a pama-tini with pink sugar on the rim of the glass, how much more fun can you get than that!

New Thing #253: Easy as Pie

I love pumpkin anything so I was excited to find that the pumpkin cake a friend made was not only delicious but ridiculously easy! You can also use it to make cookies or muffins!

1 box spice cake mix

1 can of pumpkin (15 oz)

it's that easy! just top with cream cheese frosting and you'll amaze your friends and neighbors.

New Thing #252: Fun Forward

I don't like email forwards, generally, but I decided to participate in a recipe exchange. Somehow I was supposed to get a lot of recipes back but no one responded. I don't blame them though, maybe they are like me, don't like forwards, and didn't have the incentive to do something new that day :)