T-Day
I love to cook. I love reading food blogs and collecting recipes and testing spices and foods from other countries. I love visiting the ethnic groceries in New York and smelling garam masala and picking from 20 varieties of rice. I love seeing the weird imported fruits and trying to determine which sauces might be nice, and to guess what something is in a bottle with only a foreign language on it.
My first memory of cooking is blueberry muffins. Blueberry muffin mix actually, those crappy Betty Crocker mixes with the little chemical balls of blueberry-esque flavor in them. For some reason I remember being obsessed with those in my pre-teen years. I remember running the mix through a sifter to remove all of the blueberry bits then sprinkling them back on top of the batter. For some reason I always cooked them in 8" cake pans instead of a muffin tin. I really don't know why, or where I got the idea to do it that way. I recall a few times even stacking them and frosting them like an actual cake.
My next culinary mountain was the grilled cheese. I remember traying so desperately to perfect the grilled the cheese, and to figure out how it was cooked. Of course at the time, in my mind, the perfect grilled cheese was white bread and processed cheese slices, but we all have to start somewhere. I do remember setting off the smoke detector in my grandmother's kitchen several times during the process of learning this. The idea of "low and slow" was certainly not in my repertoire at the time!
Now of course I try and tackle some bigger projects and foods. I don't really consider myself a "foodie" or even a cook of much note. I always tend to overcook things a bit, and my portions always end up being HUGE no matter what the cale of the recipe seems to be. But the whole idea is to have fun I guess, and I certainly do that.
This of course is the time of year to have tons of fun cooking. For Thanksgiving I am making Chile Lime Sweet Potatoes, a recipe that I made a few weeks back and loved, Butternut and Coconut Jam, and a wild rice and barley salad with dried fruit. And of course I am making a mac and cheese, that Southern Thanksgiving staple. Kid Flash is turning out a Cherry Cheesecake and homemade rolls.
I hope you all have a happy and tasty Thanksgiving!!
My first memory of cooking is blueberry muffins. Blueberry muffin mix actually, those crappy Betty Crocker mixes with the little chemical balls of blueberry-esque flavor in them. For some reason I remember being obsessed with those in my pre-teen years. I remember running the mix through a sifter to remove all of the blueberry bits then sprinkling them back on top of the batter. For some reason I always cooked them in 8" cake pans instead of a muffin tin. I really don't know why, or where I got the idea to do it that way. I recall a few times even stacking them and frosting them like an actual cake.
My next culinary mountain was the grilled cheese. I remember traying so desperately to perfect the grilled the cheese, and to figure out how it was cooked. Of course at the time, in my mind, the perfect grilled cheese was white bread and processed cheese slices, but we all have to start somewhere. I do remember setting off the smoke detector in my grandmother's kitchen several times during the process of learning this. The idea of "low and slow" was certainly not in my repertoire at the time!
Now of course I try and tackle some bigger projects and foods. I don't really consider myself a "foodie" or even a cook of much note. I always tend to overcook things a bit, and my portions always end up being HUGE no matter what the cale of the recipe seems to be. But the whole idea is to have fun I guess, and I certainly do that.
This of course is the time of year to have tons of fun cooking. For Thanksgiving I am making Chile Lime Sweet Potatoes, a recipe that I made a few weeks back and loved, Butternut and Coconut Jam, and a wild rice and barley salad with dried fruit. And of course I am making a mac and cheese, that Southern Thanksgiving staple. Kid Flash is turning out a Cherry Cheesecake and homemade rolls.
I hope you all have a happy and tasty Thanksgiving!!
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