Sources of Inspiration

I’ve been feeling a little stuck lately and needing a bit of new inspiration.  Thankfully the library is always a good place to find it.  I thought I’d share a few of my favorite new finds, many of which have gone from borrowed from the library to purchased for my personal collection:

Bend-the-Rules Sewing: The Essential Guide to a Whole New Way to Sew by Amy Karol – Its full of great new projects, and it even gave me permission to have unmatching cloth napkins.  I’ve known how to make cloth napkins forever, it was seriously the first thing my grandmother taught me to sew, but it has never occurred to OCD me that they could be unmatching…  There are plenty of other neat projects as well, leave it to me to highlight the most basic, ha!

The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life by Ellie Krieger – Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of her Food Network program, but I enjoyed this book.  It wasn’t one I feel the need to own, but I did jot down a few of the recipes to try in the near future.  It is an interesting book from a health perspective in that each recipe has all the nutrition breakdowns.

Food Drying At Home the Natural Way by Bee Beyer – This was a purchase, based on the recommendation of the instructor of a dehydrating course I took.  Its out of print but I was able to get a copy on Amazon and wow am I glad I did.  The book has everything from the basics of drying foods to how to use those foods once you have them dried, beyond just munching.  I’m so glad I got this one in my collection.

A Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish & Game by Wilbur Eastman – I’ve been canning meat for a little while now, but feeling like I wanted to break into it a bit more.  This book is great for beginners to canning with lots of basic instruction, it also gave me some ideas on smoking which we haven’t done beyond a little jerky making lately.  Speaking of making jerky…

Jerky: Make Your Own Delicious Jerky and Jerky Dishes Using Beef, Venison, Fish, or Fowl by A.D. Livingston – This is a great book for anyone interested in learning to make jerky and how to use it beyond the basic hiking, munchie realm.  I look forward to experimenting more with jerky in the near future.  I’m not a huge fan, personally, but Jeff loves it and I’m thinking it will make nice additions to my gift baskets.

I do need a little inspiration from my readers, too.  Do you have a tried & true slow cooker recipe you care to share?  I’m tired of all of my recipes and need a little inspiration in the slow cooker arena.  I’d prefer recipes that do not make use of condensed soup, because I don’t ever have that on hand.  Feel free to post your recipes in the comments for everyone to read or email me personally (mtkatiecakes@yahoo.com) in case of copyrighted recipes…   Thanks in advance.