Kendra's Kitchen Creations: Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year folks! So I spent my new years quietly at home, which was nice. No need to go out and get hammered and get pulled over or worse get in an accident. So I had a few friends come over and we just hung out and rang in the new year quietly. Then lucky me, I spent the whole next day in bed because I caught the bug that my entire family had up in Canada. Oh yeah, I was in Canada a few days before the new year. My cousin got married! It was a beautiful wedding and I have about 3 more of my cousins' weddings to go to within the next year or so. So I'll be seeing a lot of my Canadian family, which is GREAT! Growing up with them all around me then moving to California and only seeing them once a year was hard enough. Now I only see them if they come down to Arizona to visit me or if Dad is generous enough to fly me up to Winnipeg.

Well here I am a few days later and feeling better for the most part, still stuffy and congested, but the urge to stay in bed all day has subsided a bit. Luckily I have a few more days before I'm due back at work at the pre-school.

I've been feeling a bit of a cooking itch lately, I just want to go to the grocery store and buy all the food so I can make hundreds of different meals and snacks! Of course my bank account tells me otherwise, and also the small fact that I would have so much food and not nearly enough people to eat it. But I think I can manage a couple things and get a couple friends over here to share my food with me.

I think tonight I'm going to try my hand at my own Beef Stroganoff. I've made one recipe before (as you can see from the picture) and I really like it, but I think I want to try it again with some different stuff in it. Since Stroganoff is a pretty basic recipe, ingredient wise. Basically beef broth, sour cream, and some spices. The taste can vary however with what spices you use and of course the ratio of broth to sour cream. You can also use a cream of whatever soup instead of broth. Yes, I've been researching this since yesterday.

I've also been really wanting to explore some crab dips. I'm not big on seafood. I don't know, just the texture of most seafood doesn't sit well in my mouth. My parents think I'm weird for it, but who knows maybe one day I'll start to like it. Oddly enough, I do like crab I've had several crab dips and last week I had some crab along with my steak while out to dinner with the parents before our flight up to Canada. So who knows, maybe I'll venture into the depths of the ocean this year and try out some seafood stuff.

I've been trying to think of some new challenges for me. I like a lot of my recipes that I've made thus far, but I feel like I've got a good feel for my kitchen now and I think I can start to do some slightly difficult things. If you haven't noticed, I do a lot of recipes that call for the protein to be cut up into small pieces. I did this a lot with chicken in the beginning because I was worried about under-cooking it then the whole food poisoning thing wouldn't have been much fun. I also want to try to start working on some steaks. Who doesn't love a good steak? There's also this recipe for a Spinach Stuffed Pork Tenderloin I've been dying to try. Hmmm so maybe you'll be seeing some of this stuff in future posts.

So here's a few things to look for in the coming months...

Sirloin Beef Stroganoff
Chicken with Apple Cream Sauce & Sesame Asparagus
Spinach Stuffed Pork Tenderloin
White Russian Cupcakes & Blue Moon Cupcakes (you can thank Pinterest for finding me these ones)