This whole cooking thing.....

is going much better! I got a great new cookbook that a friend suggested and it seems to be a great beginners/busy/intimidated person's book. I've made some Mahi, meatloaf, chicken, sausage manicotti, and today I'm baking a loaf of banana bread from scratch. Later this week I'm going to attempt a roast and some ribs....wish me luck. One of the things I've come to love about some of the recipes is the left-overs! I can spend 30 to 40 minutes on dinner one evening and eat from it for 2 or 3 meals which is a great time and money saver. I still need to figure out exactly which staples I need to be sure to have around, but I think I have most things and I'm slowly building up to the rest. A couple of the recipes I wanted to try required either a deep fryer or dutch oven and I don't have either of those. Not having a fryer is probably a good thing, so I don't think I'll go buy one. I'm not sure about the dutch oven as to how useful they are and if you can make a lot of things using them, I'll have to look into that one.

The productivity doesn't stop there, today I cleaned out Elyse's dresser....she seems to be growing out of clothes so fast! I'm sure there are things she never wore or maybe wore once. Thankfully she's been dressed primarily from hand me downs and I hope to pay that forward to another baby girl someday. I'm also tackling the cabinets beneath my bathroom sink. I need to stop hoarding hotel toiletry samples and hair products that I've held onto for years and years but found I didn't need them. I just have such a hard time throwing stuff like that out. I better get to it though.