As everyone who reads this, or knows me in real life, must know by now.. I LOVE food. No really.. I think about it when I wake up in the morning, I dream about it sometimes and my mind is always on my next meal, my next snack or the next delicious morsel I can pop into my mouth. It’s a sickness and I used to be ashamed of my love affair with love that I now appreciate, nurture and am proud of.

RB and I love to find new things to do together so since we both love food and are interested in owning our own business someday, possibly a restaurant or cafe or something along those lines, we figured that we need to spend more time talking about doing things and actually start ..doing them.

We hope to be able to purchase our first home within the next 2-3 years and we figure that now is the time to start taking that seriously. And by that I mean, learning to cook, making more meals so we’re used to having to, trying out new recipes and getting creative, become more confident about cooking and most importantly, spend time together.

RB is a lot better in the kitchen than I am. He’s really excited to learn everything - even about how to properly chop vegetables and other technical things. All that stuff is important to me but I have trouble thinking about anything but the end result. My tummy has a hold over my brain. Anyways, he’s already a good cook but it’s really inspiring watching him get excited to learn more.

After asking, hinting and reminding my nanny that we would love a crock pot for Christmas this, I figured it was a done deal and was super excited to see it when I tore into the wrapping paper before we ate our family dinner. We received a second, used but still good, crock pot from my mom and a few cook books from my dad and brother. Along with the two cooking books I got for RB, we are off to a really good start with our future kitchen/meals.

Our first meal in the crock pot was beef stew and in my opinion, it was delicious. Everyone else really liked it as well, but RB and his brother concluded that it didn’t have enough flavour/spice in it. (Which works for me, I’m bland..) You live and learn, right? It was tasty, either way. You can’t go wrong with soft potatoes and tender, shredded hunks of meat. You just can’t.

Our second meal was taken from the archives of Iowa Girl Eats. Kristin has a bunch of great (and easy!) recipes on her blog, filled with lots of pictures which is great if you’re anything like me. I love to be able to reference what I’m making.. I’m a very visual learner, all around. I also tried her Green Monster Smoothie recipe because a) I love smoothies and b) I need more fibre and iron in my diet. The colour was a little shocking but the taste was decent and I knew I was doing my body good.

Anyways, the second time around we tried Crock Pot Baked Potato Soup and it’s seriously good. It was a super easy recipe to follow, took very little time to prep and best of all? It left our kitchen smelling deeeeeelicious! RB’s dad teased and said the crock pot has to go because he woke up in the night, smelled the soup cooking and got really hungry! Too bad though, it’s staying!

We’re really excited to start cooking more, with the crock pot and without, so if you have any yummy recipes, tips or ideas to share, feel free!

Happy eating, friends!