TasteSpotting Thursday

Everyone deals with jealousy on a daily basis. Jealous of a friend who has a nicer car or home than you do; jealous of a co-worker who got praise for something you did; jealous of the people in the apartment next door because you caught a glimpse inside as they were leaving and their TV is at least a 50 inch, while you're still bopping along with a 36 incher. I think that if you asked 10 random people on the street when the last time they felt jealous was, the answer would be "today" at least 8 times. And the other two would probably be lying.

You're probably wondering what the point of this ramble is, and here it is. The last time I felt jealous was about two hours ago. My husband and I were at his brother's house after visiting their grandmother in the hospital, and I was overcome by one of the worst cases of kitchen envy I've ever had. My brother and sister in law redid their kitchen about 8 months ago, and it is beautiful. Lovely stainless steel KitchenAid appliances, pretty tile floor, and acres of counter space. I've mentioned before how much I love cooking in my mother in law's kitchen, but I think I would actually prefer my brother in law's. And the reason is this: light. Any food blogger will tell you that the most important quality in any food photograph is light. Adam and Holly's kitchen has amazing light, coming in from several different angles. It's a food bloggers dream kitchen. I want to volunteer to make them dinner every night, just so I can have access to that kitchen. It makes me not want to cook in my own small, badly lit kitchen. Not that I'll actually stop cooking in my own kitchen, I'll just pout a bit first. I know that eventually my husband will be out of school, and we'll be able to afford a house(hopefully Jim already knows that an awesome kitchen is priority number one for me when it comes to house buying. If he doesn't though....hi honey! I'm going to make your life terrible when we're house hunting!) with an awesome kitchen and hopefully windows out the ying yang. But until then, I just have to lust after other people's kitchens. And hopefully convince all my in laws that a home cooked meal is worth waiting an extra 10 minutes to eat while I search for just the right angle in a photo.

So, this brings me to an idea that I've had cooking(ha ha, get it?) for awhile. Since I can't have a beautiful kitchen of my own to cook in, I want to see what people are making in their own kitchens. I have literally hundreds of recipes bookmarked waiting for me to try them, and about half of them I've found browsing on TasteSpotting. So, I bring to you TasteSpotting Thursday's. What I'm going to do is, every Thursday I'll give you all links to three or four of the most interesting looking recipes that I've found on there. They might not be things I've made myself, so I can't vouch for them, but they will be things that have been added to my daily growing lists of recipes I want to try, but haven't because I'm too busy, too stressed, too tired, or just too bummed to want to cook in my own kitchen.

Hopefully, if you try them first, you can let me know how they turned out.

So, for the first installment, I give you three recipes that have been added to my list, and now hopefully yours.


1.

2.

3.

Number one is an onion cracker recipe, number 2 is pecan pie bars, and number three is a lamb burger with tzatziki sauce and feta cheese.

All three of those look fantastic, and please, if you do try them, please let me know how they turned out.