For the first trimester of this pregnancy, I ate whatever I could keep down or that sounded good. The meals were hardly satisfying in any way other than a food, food, give me food way. I'm glad my morning sickness has finally (hopefully) passed and I'm into my second trimester, I'm really happy to be cooking again.

I think it all started with the pickles I made a couple of weeks ago. I let them marinate in the fridge for a while and finally tried them and they were tremendous. I'm usually not a fan of sweet pickles but there is something about home-made pickles that warrants an exception. The recipe is from this months' Everyday Food. (yes, its a Martha magazine but its the best cooking magazine out there. seriously). The recipe doesn't seem to be available online so I won't reprint it here but the issue as a whole is a good one and worth picking up. Making the pickles was about 10 minutes of my day and it made four jars.

My happy return to cooking has left me feeling like I'm up for a challenge and I've been thinking about what to do for a few days and I think I've got it.

For the month of July, I will not order takeout. My family and I will eat all of our food cooked here at home.

There are a few rules here that I think are necessary. On hectic days, I will take advantage of a few convenience foods but I'm going to, at a minimum, prepare some kind of decent side dish to go along with them even if its just steaming some frozen veggies. I'll also make an exception here for the "failed meal" since I'm sure it will happen at least once; if I make something that is terrible, I'm not going to make my family starve to death while I prepare something else from scratch. In that case, I reserve full rights to order something out.

To begin my big challenge, I whipped out my favorite-ever kitchen device this afternoon--my All-Clad 7 quart slow cooker--and chopped up some veggies to make some veggie stock for some soup I'm planning tonight.

If you've never made vegetable stock before you should really give it a try, especially if you own a large slow cooker.

You'll need:
about 10 carrots,
3 onions,
4ish stalks of celery,
a big bunch of parsley,
some whole peppercorns and
some dried thyme.

Rough chop all the big stuff and throw it in the slow cooker with 12 cups of water. Cook on high for four hours or low for 8 hours. If you have other veggies, you can add those as well. (I also add red pepper flakes to mine but thats just me). Strain it when its done (and cooled off a bit) and you'll have enough stock for at least two big batches of soup.

I made mine today while chopping veggies for my lunchtime salad. It added *maybe* 10 minutes time to the process. Super duper, I say. The stock has only been cooking about 30 minutes by now but its already smelling dreamy. I'll let you know how the soup turns out--its this recipe for Tortellini Vegetable Soup from Williams Sonoma. yum!