Oh, Mr Baker

You may ask yourself, how can she love a man who makes himself a snack consisting of  dry, leftover rice, ketchup, and mozzarella cheese all shoved in a microwave?

Well, when he takes to leaving little notes around the house everyday, you find a lot of things easy to forgive :)

Especially since he looks so good washing dishes in one of my aprons.

Love you Mr Baker :)

Our favorite thing CURRY!

 Mr. Baker made dinner Saturday night, we love curry, it's one of our favorite dishes :)

I love being Mrs. Baker :)

Le date a la France lingered in oiour hearts...and mouths :)

Saturday Mr Baker and I woke up late, about an hour before we were supposed to babysit the neighbor's kids, so I needed to whip up a quick breakfast...did I mention that we desperately needed to go shopping and were quite limited in our food options?
Answer to all these woes... CREPES!

My neighbor expressed how impressed she was by my crepe making. She loves crepes but has always been to intimidated to try to make them

You really shouldn't be intimidated by "foreign food", crepes are really just like making pancakes only much thinner and different ratios on the basic ingredient

I then scrambled some of the onion gratinee from last night in with the eggs until the liquid was completely reduced. ..yum!

DATE NIGHT! Dinner and a movie a la Francois

Here on campus they have Foreign Film night every other Friday (fo' FREE)! Last Friday's film was the film "My Mother's Castle", a sequel to "My Father's Glory which my Zesty Partner and I watched last semester at Foreign Film night.

Both were very enjoyable movies, but we liked the first one more because it felt more nostalgic :)

 

To make the night all the more special, I decided to cook french food for dinner to give us that added sense of la France.

Begin with homemade pain de Francois (that's french bread)

A little Gratin Dauphinois

 

 

 

 

Some Onion Gratinee

 

 

 

The Gratinee called for beef stock, which I did not have. I went to grab some chicken stock from the fridge, but we were fresh out. However we had several cans of Progresso chicken noodle soup--Zut Alors! I have a solution! Open up the soup cans and drain out the broth from there. We saved the "stuff" from the cans to use for a biscuit top casserole and made a delicious onion soup--great for dipping

Next came the "French Champagne" ...

really it's just a punch made with ginger ale and apple juice~ quite tasty too!

Check out the spread! Our humble kitchen turned into a lovely French cafe...with Edith Piaf playing on Pandora for atmosphere :)

Mr. Baker LOVED IT! I love to see him laugh :)

Now who's doing the dishes ?

Call me obsessed if you want....

I love provident living--I kind of take it to an extreme. Right now in my kitchen, there lingers the smell of semi-burnt homemade cornflakes (cornflah-KAYs--as I like to pronounce them). That's right, homemade cornflakes. They're a little burnt because I didn't add enough water/honey/brown sugar mixture to my corn masa. Mr Baker ate them anyway and I promised I'd get it right next time :).

Sometimes I wonder what Mr. Baker must think when he comes home and surveys the scene I have created while he's gone at class. Probably something like "I'm sooo hungry I can't wait to eat whatever it is and hopefully it tastes good enough to be worth all those piles of dishes that I'll have to wash ;)....why are there ziploc bags soaking in the sink and why does the shower smell different?"

My obsession with provident living began with a talk by Elder Robert D. Hales, an apostle in my church. He spoke about the importance of being more wise in the use of our resources, specifically money.

That talk struck a chord within me and ever since then I have been strengthening my discernment of what is important in life and of an eternal value over what is merely nice and convenient. Along with that I have also grown a passion for making everything I can homemade. I often joke with Mr. Baker that one day I might just write a book called "Flour, oil, sugar, salt-- possibly yeast" and I would share my secrets for making bread, crackers, CORNFLAKES, oreos, chocolates...everything you buy at the store made at home by you. I found so many good things as a result of this attitude. I eat healthy and snack less because if I want to eat something I have to make it rather than simply run to the pantry and shove it my face.

And of course there is the cleaning too....

I always feel a pang of waste whenever I through away perfectly good ziploc bags--especially if they've only held dry goods for only a few hours. So I started soaking them in sudsy water, then rinse and hang up on glass jars to dry and be reused another time---I told you I was obsessed :)

I don't even buy house cleaners:0. The yellow is the de-gunker, it's a simple mixture of water and baking soda (I need to buy more baking soda now). Baking soda is a great cleaner. If you ever find a ton of burnt on mess at the bottom of one of your favorite pots, then make a paste with baking soda and water and apply to your frustrated pot. Let it soak in overnight and you'll be amazed of what that stuff can accomplish. Some dishes require multiple jobs, but the baking soda paste does more than "dawn" ever does. The pink is for hard water stains and a glass cleaner. It's white vinegar and water, and it is amazing! Blue is bleach water, it's the disinfectant. I love the smell of bleach! I like using these simple mixtures b/c 1) they're cheap and easy, 2) I know exactly what's in them, and except for the bleach, they will not harm any one.

(look: me cleaning the shower --yes I move that fast lol)

Oh how I love homemaking.....

Especially when Mr. Baker comes home for lunch and eats my semi burnt corn-flahKAYs without complaint as I assure him that next time I'll make them better.

And then kisses me so much that my lipgloss gets on him (and even let's me take a picture of it--but probably not if he knew it was going to end up on my blog;] )

I think my lipgloss looks better on him than on me lol

...Mrs. Baker, Tschuss!