My desire to cook (and more often to bake) new things comes in waves. Lately, we’ve been trying to menu plan. We literally take a calendar on Google and enter what we’re having for lunch and dinner every day; then it sends us daily reminders in our email so we don’t forget whether we’re cooking, eating leftovers, or going out for that particular meal.

It’s a pretty handy system; the only problem is we get lazy and go for a few weeks without menu planning before we realize how stressed we (and more honestly, I) get without planning menus ahead of time and how much more tempted we are to go out to eat when we haven’t planned anything out.

In our times of planning, I’ve come across some great new recipes. You have to understand, I grew up without cooking anything, except spaghetti and macaroni and cheese. Everything else, I made in a toaster or a microwave. My parents had a few meals that they liked to cook, but I guess I never got around to learning how to make those meals. And other than that, we just weren’t the kind of family that sits around cooking together.

Even now, when we have a big family get-together, the smoke alarm usually goes off several times before the cooking has finished.

So keeping my genetic tendency to dislike cooking in mind, I’m pretty proud of my recent accomplishments (even though they actually are baking, which I enjoy a lot more than cooking.) Here’s a photographic journey:

Homemade bread!

Perfect sandwich bread, made with organic flour

Homemade organic stuffed crust pizza!

What are your favorite things to make in the kitchen?