More Kitchen Adventures

I'm not your usual cook. I make Hollandaise sauce in the blender, cookies out of cake mix, fudge in the microwave, etc.

 I prefer to bake. I have very little experience cooking meat, so Thanksgiving is scary for me because I'm suddenly in charge of a huge bird as the focal point. I can make meatloaf and Shepherd's Pie and cook eggs seven ways but something about cuts of meat is strange to me. I think I'm overly anxious about it not being done in the middle. I mean, let's face it, even with something as easy as Hot Pockets you usually end up with filling that's either half-frozen or lava. I've mastered Hot Pockets (thanks to college) but meat still confuses me. I don't own a grill either, but I should cook inside before I go outside and get attacked by  mosquitoes while I agonize over steaks on the grill.

I don't even like to defrost meat. People have their hang-ups and chores they don't like. One of mine is defrosting meat. I would rather take meat out of the freezer two days in advance then have a defrost-a-thon with the microwave. I've also begun to notice when something has been frozen. I don't just mean if something has freezerburn, I mean if pasta or whatever was frozen and then thawed and cooked or reheated.

My favorite cookbook is tried-and-true recipes from people I know. However, I did have an incident with French onion soup. I'm not a big fan of it anyway. But I tried making some, slaved over it for about 3 hours and then didn't like it so I had a pb&j for dinner. I was so disappointed! So I've learned not to mess around with a complicated recipe for a food I don't really care for (i.e. no asparagus or salmon in my kitchen). Sure, if I ran into Bobby Flay or Cat Cora in Kitchen Stadium and they wanted to make salmon for me, I'd taste it. Let's face it, if something tastes really good, it was probably a slight pain in the butt to make.

Now, I haven't quite figured out the spice thing either. I know if the dish is Italian-ish then you can add basil and oregano and garlic and diced tomatoes. Of course I usually add whatever a recipe calls for, outside of hot peppers (I have acid reflux and an onion allergy).

I have on occasion craved foods I don't even like. This wasn't just a pregnancy thing. But it's not weird stuff, it's just foods I normally wouldn't eat, like supreme pizza. I'm working on broadening my food horizons so that I can at least tolerate, if not enjoy, new foods. I've learned to like black olives. I'm still working on green. I like Kalamata olives too (they come on my favorite pizza actually) but I can't just sit and eat them.

I have a small addiction to Nutella. I don't eat it instead of peanut butter on a sandwich. I spread it on shortbread cookies and eat it for dessert :-D Then the next day I go to the gym.