I'm Making THIS for Dinner!

Thanks, Pioneer Woman!





Back in late 2006, I had quit my job to study for the LSAT. Theoretically, since I had the time, I should have also been cooking Monster dinner every night. But I had no inspiration to cook and so our usual pattern of eating out or grabbing take out continued. We both cooked a little but had a very small menu selection (mostly chicken and fish), so it got boring really fast. Actually, full disclosure, I learned how to cook from scratch as a teenager in Puerto Rico but never really felt like cooking--so I didn't. Brat!

Anyway, around this same time, fall 2006, I started to watch this show called Top Chef . Their cooking contests made preparing food seem new and fun. I remember watching an episode and then rooting around my cupboard for the first time to add sauted minced onions and garlic to my prepackaged mushroom soup. Baby steps.

A year later, I started law school and didn't cook at all-not one meal--for an entire semester. This was due to the fact that I was hardly home & also Monster was back in the States. However, the summer after first year, Monster's aunt told me about an internet browser download called "Stumble Upon" where you can plug in your areas of interest & push a button to be transported around various unknown parts of the internet universe.

Through Stumble Upon, I discovered this amazing menu website. It was built by a homemaker rancher's wife in Oklahoma who takes the most beautiful photographs of each stage of the cooking process. Slowly, I began following the recipes and I noticed that creating these dishes at the end of a long, stressful day actually decreased my stress levels. Especially risotto--making risotto melts away my stress, all that stirring and broth absorbing, not to mention the glorious, glorious rice toasting. Last night, I made a carrot risotto with butter poached cod and it was just delightful! Seblime! I was so proud of myself and so happy I had found such a productive hobby.

Here in Vancouver, there are so many specialty markets and farmer's markets that the very act of grocery shopping inspires me to experiment with food. I never thought I would pick up cooking in my mid-thirties. After all, if you don't cook throughout your twenties and early thirties, what hope is there?

Quite alot, as it turns out.

Some of the recipes I will try this year: biscuits & gravy, : baba ghanoush,: bacon wrapped jalepenos, and enchiladas.