Food. My Love Affair With Food.

If you follow me on Instagram, or hell you just know me, you will know that I am OBSESSED with food. Not just because you get to eat it and it is a building block of life and all, but I am OBSESSED with food. All kinds of food.

I play with my food constantly. Deal.

Right now I am obsessed mostly with spicy fennel sausages (no idea where that came from) and kale. I COULD WRITE LOVE SONGS ABOUT KALE!!! Tucker and I make this soup which we attempted to healthify (and succeeded I may add) from Olive Garden. We call it our Kale Sausage soup.... I will put the recipe at the bottom of this post. It is dangerously simple. Only four ingredients and full of flavor!

Back to talking about food: I love to read about it. You can find cook books littering the floor around my bed. They are just so fun to go through and get inspired!! Most of my Pinterest page is dedicated to various foods I cook and I have started to find a lot of enjoyment in stalking various food themed blogs.

I love to shop for food. It is a deadly addiction. Seriously though, I would rather go grocery shopping instead of shoe shopping. It is near blasphemous, but it is vintage Jessie. I try to go in with a grocery list to save money, but I always see something that looks fun to cook and just buy it on spot. Then of course I get home and think, "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?!!" . My newest endeavor was with lamb. I know it is nothing too extreme, but I had never ventured that way before. I ate lamb my last two days in the Philippines and became addicted:

My roasted lamb, mashed cauliflower and Worcestershire sauteed mushrooms. FANTABULOUS! 

But, MOST of all, I love to COOK. Oh my god, do I love to cook!!!! After spending a month and a half in the Philippines and NOT being able to cook it was alllllll I wanted to do when I got home. I would day dream about going home and being able to hustle and bustle around my kitchen. I even food planned dinners for the two weeks after I came home.... which I of course neglected to follow.

Cooking is everything to me. It brings people together in a way that other things in life can't. It makes my heart happy to cook a gigantic gorgeous meal and then be praised for all my efforts. For instance: this past Christmas my Gram Grams was ill so I took all the Christmas responsibilities for the family and just went to town on Pinterest!

Why am I talking about food? Because I have decided to document food I make and eat on here. Writing down recipes and sharing them with you. Just another facet of Jessie. And a pretty big one at that.

 Like I promised, my current favorite recipe! And souperrrrr simple at that!

Tucker and Jessie's Kale Sausage Soup:
1-2 cups Kale leaves (chopped, Tuck prefers if the steams are removed. I don't care)
3 cups Chicken Broth
3 Red Potatoes
1-2 Spicy Sausages.*

*This totally depends on your preferred level of carnivore. Or whatever kind of sausages you want. Tuck and I just realized the spiciness adds a bit of  a zing to the broth!

Step 1: Cut open spicy sausage and remove meat from casing. Put in pan to brown.
Step 2: While sausage is browning: put the rest of ingredients in pot. Bring pot to boil until potatoes are fork tender. Turn heat down. (I usually let it boil for a while. Just my preference.)
Step 3: Combine steps 1 and 2
Step 4: Nom on that tasty business. 


Obviously you can tweak this recipe however you see fit. It started as a knock off, but I didn't have any cream one day so we just rolled with the punches and made it anyway!

Another new healthy favorite meal: Poached egg on Arugula. Special thanks to Ms. Cassie Taylor, Ms. Stephanie Morris and my week in China for that little gem.

A perfect poach! After three tries.... shhhh!

La Fondue. More About Wine.

My husband is the greatest. Just absolutely the GREATEST. Last night we did our usual 6 month visit to La Fondue... It's kind of sort of our spot. I just like to get fancy and drink wine. And eat. I really like to eat.

The owner is AMAZING. A great person who really cares about his customers!

Anyways... We had a bottle of Cabernet with dinner. Of course it got drank way too fast so, of course, Jessie bought a bottle of Malbec. I don't know what it is about Fondue, but I have to have Malbec when I have it.

I woke up this morning hating myself.

My fabulous date night with my fabbbbbulous mint dress! 

Jessie had far too many of these.

I suck at blogs.

This is the truth.

In my own defense, the entire time I was in Kiangan there were only two places I could go to use the internet.

Place One: Our usual  go to place had the worst internet I could have ever imagined. It was the office for Save The Ifugao Terraces Movement. At first I got annoyed with how awful the connection was, but by the end the place became like an escape from the field and the craziness that was accessioning.

Place Two: MARVIC'S! My favorite little store with the absolute best human beings I have ever met. They had an internet connection and we would guy buy ice cream and just stand in the aisles and talk to our loved ones.

This aside, I did keep a journal while I was in Kiagan. So, in order to post things on here and keep a hard record of it, I am going to write from the journal on to here and add photos/ deeper explanations. I wish I could have blogged at the time, but electronics were not exactly my forte while abroad. I was more concerned about dodging giant bugs and not getting a tape worm. This will all be explained later.

So that is that! Deal! I told you, writing can be hard in foreign countries!! Especially in places like Kiangan.... where life is beautiful and every where you turn there are kids playing, the most beautiful views and the happiest people you will ever meet.


Ok, as for this blog.... It is entitled "Indiana Jessie" and I am taking that to mean all sorts of adventures. My life adventures, my across the world adventures.... my cooking adventures. This life of mine  is one big adventure and I fully plan on living it that way.

So far, so good :)