Cooking, lots and lots of cooking.

 This:

 is my basil plant.

So this:

 was the todo list on the dry-erase board on my fridge today.

Alex is spending the night at a friend's house, so I thought that it would be a perfect time for Sarah and I to spend some time in the kitchen cooking together. So we both strapped on our aprons and got to work.  Here's the breakdown of what we ended up making:

• Pie crust ( for apple pies that I'm going to make next weekend from apples the kids and I picked with my mom)
• Pesto
• And Pinto/refried beans (these were a last minute addition, but they turned out yummy)

Sarah and I made the pie crust first. Now this was an experiment for me because I am inexplicably afraid of making my own pastry, but I'm tired of using Pillsbury and I wanted to try doing it from scratch this year (apple picking and pie making is an annual event in our house.)

So what's a girl to do? I opened up my trusty Pioneer Woman cookbook.

If you haven't heard of her yet  here's her website. Go ahead, check it out. I'll wait.

I know, cool huh? I've been reading her blog for a couple of years and have really enjoyed it, and I also love the recipes on her site. Anyway, so I followed her recipe for pie crust. It was really easy, and it's hanging out in the freezer right now. I'll pull it out tomorrow and bake some of it by the way of taste testing before I actually make pies with it. I'll let you know how it goes.

Next came the pesto, so Sarah and I went out on the back patio to pick the basil. My basil plant is up past my waist so I decided that it was high time to make pesto.

Here's a close up of it. Hello beautiful.

 

Here are some pictures of the process. 

                                    

 

I started with high hopes, but I'm not quite sure of the results. 

I'm not exactly a pesto expert, but I think that it turned out okay. I won't show you any pictures of the finished product though, I just couldn't find a way to make it not look, well, gross, and I'm not going to subject you to that. Aaaanyway, moving on. 

Here's the pinto beans, also a la Pioneer Woman, they turned out really, really good. I filled up four freezer containers with them. I left half of them whole and then mashed the other half to make refried beans. 

 And just because I love ya, here's a photo of my kitchen counter in the middle of everything.