Cooking Up A Storm

Literally.

I went on a cooking binge this week. I'm pretty much exhausted from measuring, kneading, checking the doneness of meats and WASHING dishes! I swear I used every single one of our dishes at least three times. The best part is that the refrigerator is overflowing with leftovers.

At times, it really did seem like a storm in our kitchen. I think the smoke alarm went of six times this week. But to my credit, the oven is really dirty and smokes easily. Wait- how is that to my credit?

I love to cook. There is just something about having a finished product at the end of all your work. Very unlike reading casebooks, studying or attending class. And the results taste much better too. I got really tired of thumbing through my million cookbooks and trying to remember old recipe websites to find my favorite recipes. So I bought a really nice journal at the local bookstore and I have been transcribing all my favorite, no-fail recipes into ONE BOOK. It's totally awesome. I LOVE my recipe book. I even have false hopes that my kids will pick it up after I'm long gone, make my old recipes and fondly rememberme...ha ha ha- ok, back to reality.

This week I made the following:

Potato Pierogies
Spatzle- German dumplings with ham and Sauerkraut (my great grandma's recipe!)
Homemade pizza bagels- from scratch!
Country fried steak with biscuits and sausage gravy (all from scratch)
Tandoori chicken (a recipe from my Indian friend- but still not as good as hers)
Pecan Pie (times two!)
Teriyaki chicken with homemade sauce
Chicken Sio Pao (phillipino dumplings - like the round chinese dumplings)

Wow, I'm exhausted just thinking about it all. This is going to be one yummy week of leftovers. If I would have just spent a fraction of the time that I spent cooking on doing my law school homework, I could have been ready for tomorrow's 8am class. Sigh.

**Updated to include recipe links!