Pinterest Successes from my Kitchen!

In our home, my daughter Molly, a dedicated DIY-er and craft maven was the first Pinterest afficionado, but it didn't take long before our whole family was hooked. It became the go-to place for new ideas, inspiration, and a lot of day-dreaming.  I absolutely love food porn sites like Tastespotting, and my go-to site for finding recipes is still Epicurious or Foodblog Search, but I, like many of you, have been heading to Pinterest increasingly for food inspiration.  I have periodically heard of Pintertest failures, but so far I am batting 1000 for my Pinterest experiments, so I am going to share my secrets for Pinterest success:

This egg in avocado from Gizmodo made for a healthy and popular breakfast!

1) Follow photo back to original source-  I feel a lot more confident if the recipe comes from a food blogger or other reputable source.

2) Read comments -  Some people repin just to comment while others have actually tried the recipe, and that is a great help in decidig whether to take the plunge.

3) Share your experience - if you have tried a recipe, repin or comment so that others can know whether it was a success or not along with any changes/substitutions you may have made.

Bridget's version of this bread was amazing!

4) Give Credit - If you can, credit the original source.  It provides traffic and feedback to the source.Sometimes it will take a few clicks, but nice etiquette for the Pinterest community. 

That said, let me share with you some of my recent Pinterest successes.

Egg in Avocado - This is a healthy and delicious breakfast. If you look this up on Pinterest you can find the basic recipe, but I lightly salted my avocado, used a small egg, and sprinked the top with cheese and it was delicious!!!

Heat+ whole milk+lemon juice= the makings of paneer

Cheesy Bacon Ranch Bread -  Several versions of this showed up, but my daughter Bridget made this one from The Country Cook.  It turned out terrific. We had this as the starch of a meal, and I used the leftovers to make the best salad croutons I have ever had!

A jar of sauce is a low-tech weight to compress my paneer.

Homemade Paneer Cheese - I fell in love with Palak Paneer, and Indian dish of spinach and mild Indian cheese, and was intrigued to see that paneer was easy to make at home, and so I was determined to try it based in this post at Journey Kitchen..Guess what?  It was really easy to make, fun and it was great in my own palak paneer.  I felt like a real foodie, making my own Dowd kitchen artisan paneer.  Give it a try and invite your kids in the kitchen- they will be amazed by the transformation of two simple ingredients into CHEESE!!

I will keep searching Pinterest for great ideas to try, and will let you know how mine turn out.  In the meantime you can follow my pins to see what I am looking at, trying and dreaming about!  See you there!