Lox and Fried Egg Breakfast

I just thought of something delicious and amazing that I am going to try for a pre-physical therapy egg date on Wednesday morning.

I went to Barnes & Noble on Sunday to use my $20 gift card that I won in the ACM Current Technology Contest last week. My submission was a great site called Wordle. Use it, love it. I used the card to pick up Douglas Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop and then, since I had $3 left, I decided to pick up Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Since it was so close, and Jesse needed grapefruit soda, we went to Trader Joe's afterwards! While there I picked up some lox because A. I'm Jewish and cannot resist and B. I fucking love lox.

I've had some just as a snack so far, and was thinking of what else I could do with it! Since I now have the physical therapy, Jess and I can do egg dates on some mornings again! I got to thinking and remembered a time when I fried a piece of lox with an egg over it. It was pretty good, but the lox really was not well incorporated with the egg at all. Then I remembered that a cool thing about eggs is that you can separate the yolk from the whites! BANG! It was like a shot of inspiration flew into my brain, seeping into my neural tissue like a really fine sauce being ladled onto spaghetti. First it drips down through the layers and then, as it thins out a little, it begins to stick to the pasta.

Now I have a plan, and here it is! To make it easier to follow, it will be in list form:

1. Get out an egg and a little piece of lox, somewhere between 1x1" and 2x2". You certainly don't need to measure, but that seems like a good size for something like this.
   
2. Separate the one egg into 2 small bowls/containers. You can use a fancy egg separating device, or use the one mother nature gave us a.k.a. its shell. I'm not going to attempt to describe this so I'll assume that if you can get to my blog you can google for "separating eggs"
   
3. Heat up some butter on medium in your really awesome cast iron skillet (either of them really, you pick!) or a non-stick pan. Or any frying pan.
   
4. When the butter has melted and is on the way to becoming brown put the egg white down in the pan.
5. Immediately place the piece of lox on top of this, followed by the yolk. Try not to break it!
6. Hopefully it will not slip off and you will have a tasty little tower cooking in your skillet.
7. Cover it if you want. I do this so that things cook faster and, seemingly, more evenly. This will trap the heat inside so it is more efficient!
8. After a smidgen less than a minute flip it so that the yolk side can cook on the pan.
9. After less time than before, it is done!
10. Put it on a plate and eat it!

This is really just an idea right now, and I'll try to remember to take pictures when I do this tomorrow morning. If not that just means I'll have to purchase more eggs and lox and do it again, oh no!

Recipe: Jicama and Apple Salad

I've never used jicama in anything before. In fact, before Saturday I don't think I've ever even held one. However, I decided to take the plunge and purchase one for $1.50 at the Phoenixville Farmer's Market. I actually didn't have any solid plan for it at that point. The woman I bought it from mentioned using it like other root vegetables in soups or roasting. She also talked about using it in a salad, which I have seen online before, so that sort of stuck with me in the back of my mind.

This didn't really come together until I went with my parents (who came up to visit!) to this market in Phoenixville that has really great prices for produce. While walking around I thought about the jicama and remembered that those salads made from it almost always had apple in them, thus I should definitely pick some up! The market had some Eastern Delicious red apples just kind of hanging out in front of the counter, so I grabbed a bag of those. Just across the way from them was a big box of mangoes, which I absolutely love, so two of these were also purchased for the salad. To round everything out, I saw that blood oranges were 4/$1. I had to get them!

When I was putting this together on Sunday, I initially was just going to use jicama, apple and mango. I was sort of following this recipe for a (soy) creamy vinaigrette I'd found after about a few seconds of googling. However, I didn't have soy milk or cream, so I sort of went off on my own direction. In the end this dressing consisted of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, dijon mustard, blood orange juice, carrot juice, salt and pepper. Ugh, it was so gross. There was too much mustard and vinegar, I think. Honestly, I'm not sure what really threw it all off, so I ended up just scrapping it. I think if I tried to make it again without the mustard and only a tiny bit of vinegar it might be good? Dunno, doubt I'll try it though.

Anyway, since the dressing idea was scratched, I started looking around the kitchen for something to spice up the salad which, at this point really only consisted of jicama, apple and mango. Laying on the table behind all my stuff for the dinner was a little knob of ginger and, right next to it, the bag of blood oranges I'd bought the day before.

Aha! This is great!

Ingredients:

• 1 jicama
• 3 small, great, red apples
• 2 mangoes
• Ginger
• 1 blood orange
  (Ignore all that crap for the dressing on the left. Also the cabbage.)
  
  

Directions:

1. Skin the jicama and then shave it using the big holes on a cheese grater into a big bowl, a.k.a. the serving bowl
2. Quarter the apples, keeping the skin on, and then slice the cores off. Dice them up however you want and add then to the bowl, mixing them in well.
3. Mango. I am not 100% sure what the best way to cut up mangoes is so either google it or figure it out. Anyway, cut the mangoes into thin strips, sort of like matchsticks but as close as you can get with mango. Add this to the bowl and mix around!
   
   
4. Grate (using your microplane if you have it!) about one thumb knuckle's worth of ginger into the bowl and mix it around as best you can.
5. Then, grate about half of one blood orange's zest into the bowl too. If you don't have a grater you can just cut it off with a knife, but be very careful. You want to avoid getting any of the pith, the white stuff under the zest, into the salad because it is bitter and doesn't taste good.
   Here's a picture of a blood orange and my microplane because I thought it would be a good one:
   
6. Mix it all up and eat it!

This came together SOOOO much better than I thought it would! I absolutely love it and plan on making it again as soon as I can. This salad does not need a dressing at all. The flavors of the ingredients, especially the subtle ones from the ginger and zest, combine together so well on their own that adding a sauce just wouldn't do it all justice.



I think if I make this again I might try adding raisins, or maybe another fruit. Don't really know, but I guess I'll figure it out next time I get some jicama!

Enjoy!

Recipe: Chicken and Vegetable Soup

Chicken and vegetable soup is something that will, guaranteed, raise anyone's (except those vegans) spirits on the worst of days. Luckily, it is also very simple to make! If you have the time I definitely recommend making your own broth too. It not only tastes better, but it adds that extra homey feel to your soups! If you can't or don't want to make your own broth, then make sure you purchase the low-sodium or sodium-free variety. I'd guess about 2 quarts is enough, but I didn't actually measure how much I had.

Ingredients:

• 2 or more quarts of chicken broth
• Garlic #1: 2 big pieces diced finely
  
• Garlic #2: 1 smallish piece either diced finely or pressed
• 2 medium onions - cut into rings and then halved
  
• 3 stalks of celery - finely sliced
• 2 carrots - finely sliced
• Vegetable oil
• One or two handfuls of diced, cooked chicken
  
• Salt and Pepper
  

Directions:

1. Prepare your vegetables and put them in separate stuff, kind of like seen above!
2. Put the soup pot on medium and put about one tablespoon of oil in there. Once it gets hot, put the garlic in and stir it around for 10-15 seconds.
3. Dump in the onion next and start stirring!
4. After a minute add in the carrots and stir it up some more!
5. Stir occasionally for the next few minutes and then add in the celery, including the leaves!
   
6. Stir a bit for a minute or so and then add in the broth and mix it all up! If there is any vegetable stuck to the bottom of the pot, make sure you scrape it up because that's where the flavor's at.
   
7. Let it get up to a boil, add in the garlic #2, some S&P and then drop the heat down to low, maybe about 3/10 if that makes sense. Adding in the garlic here gives it that "garlicky" taste, while the garlic added earlier gets fried, having a completely different, deeper taste.
   
8. After about an hour or so of simmering, add the chicken in and let it heat up for a bit.
9. It is now done!
10. Dish it out into bowls and then enjoy!

This is a great but simple little soup, perfect for a cold and dreary day or a breezy, hot summer night. There's certainly a ton you can do with it too! You could add more different vegetables, make a roux or add in some cream to thicken it or even a bunch of other things that I can't even think of right now! Hopefully you'll take this recipe and adapt it into something you can enjoy for the rest of your life!

Enjoy!

Recipe: Roasted Vegetables

Roasted vegetables are one of the easiest ways to prepare vegetables, ever. It literally consists of cutting them into chunks, tossing them in oil (optional) and salt and peppering them (also optional, but really come on) and then plopping them in the oven until the bottom of them get nice and caramelized. Even though you could do this with just one or even up to 800 different vegetables, here's a list of what I used and what I did to them.

Ingredients:

• 2 stalks of broccoli - sliced the stems and cut the florets in half
• 2 stalks of celery - sliced in 1" chunks
  
• 1 pound of button mushroms - cut in half down the stem
• 3 carrots - sliced into 1/2" chunks
• 4 small potatoes - diced into 1/4" chunks
• 2 medium onions - quartered
• Vegetable oil
• Salt-N-Pepa
  
  

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
   
2. Next, cut up your veggies either as I said up there or really however you feel like it. I personally prefer bigger chunks when roasting, but it's really about what you want to be putting in your mouth.
3. Put the veggies in a bowl. You might want to split them up if you don't have a big enough bowl, I know I did.
4. In only one of the bowls, dump some veggie oil in and mix it up.
5. Toss in however much salt and freshly ground pepper as you want into that bowl and then mix that up as well. You could also use other herbs, but I prefer this to be as simple as possible, while still tasting amazing. That being said, it is not at all a bad idea to toss in some oregano and/or rosemary or what have you.
6. If you had to split the veggies up into 2 or more bowls, dump the one with the oiled veggies onto a foiled baking sheet and then add the dry veggies into the oily bowl and repeat 4-6 until you've oiled, salted and peppered all the vegetables and they are all mixed up on the sheet.
   
7. Put them in the oven for like, 60-90 minutes. I forget how long I did it for honestly, just do what feels right to you!
8. Mix them up once or twice, but make sure they remain still for the last 30 minutes or so. This will allow the bottoms of some of the veggies to caramelize. What this means is that they will turn black, get hard and taste WAY more delicious. Caramelization is a wonderful thing that you should definitely take advantage of, as it adds tons of great flavor to everything you do.
9. When they're done you can dump them on a platter and serve them, or just eat them off the sheet. If they're done before the rest of the meal is ready, just turn of the oven and let them chill in there. If you're worried about overcooking them (which you shouldn't be but hey, we're all different) then you can open the oven door for a bit after you turn it off so it can cool down. Make sure you shut it though so the veggies retain as much heat as is possible!

So like I said, this is a really simple recipe. So simple in fact, that I recommend you never come to this page again and just attempt to do it from memory every time you make it! As I mentioned on the meal page for this, none of these recipes had any specific recipe except what I know in my head to be good. This is a skill I DEFINITELY recommend EVERYBODY try to work towards. One great reason is that it allows you to just throw together amazing food with whatever you have on hand. Also, since you know what ingredients go well with others, you can experiment with things that may or may not be such great combos, and you can have a reasonably good idea of what was clashing if it didn't work or what caused it to be delicious.

Enjoy!

Delicious dinner tonight

Tonight for dinner I decided to use that awesome chicken broth I made on Thursday and make some soup! I also decided to make some roasted vegetables and a salad to go with that! Here's the list of courses (hahaha) as well as a picture of the final products! I will update this with links as soon as I do the write ups for them. If I had to guess I would say they'll be up by 5pm at the latest!

Here's what I made:

• Roasted Vegetables
• Chicken and Vegetable Soup
• Celeriac and Apple Salad

It was all vegan except the chicken soup which wasn't vegan on account of the chicken broth and chunks of roasted chicken flesh that I put in. Feel free to steal these recipes! I made up the soup and veggie one (not that either are particularly hard, especially the veggies) and the salad was me just taking what I'd seen people do with celeriac and then updating it with stuff I had on hand. It isn't exactly seasonal, even though the celeriac was picked up at the Phoenixville Farmer's Market, but it was refreshing and so delicious.


Enjoy!

Recipe: Making Chicken (or Any Poultry) Stock!

Ok, so you've roasted some bird(s) and now you've got this picked clean, beautiful hunk of bones, fat, gristle and those little pieces of muscle that never seen to wanna come loose just sitting on a tray. Let's make some stock! Here's what you'll need:

• Carcasses (really any bones, but this recipe is specifically for chicken)
• 3-4 medium sized, yellow onions
• 1 carrot
• 4-5 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 green bell pepper (maybe not as this might make it too sweet for you, but I had it sitting around so I used it)
• veggie / olive oil
• Some herbs, preferably fresh
• Peppercorns

OK, stock is pretty simple, so simple in fact! Here! We! GO!!!!

1. Cut up those veggies! Just chunk them, they don't really need to be small or look nice as they're getting thrown away soon!
   IMPORTANT: Make sure you keep the skin from the onions as they add a beautiful, rich yellow color to the broth!!
   
2. Put some (a tiny bit) of that oil in a big pot over medium-high heat and let it get hot.
3. Add the veggies and stir them around a bit, but then let them sit in the pot until the bottom of them gets browned. This is a very important step, so do not not do it! (Haha, I hate double negatives, they confuse me so much. However, I don't feel like figuring out how to rewrite it, so deal with it I'm sorry). This browning is caused by something known as the Maillard Reaction and long story short it basically breaks down sugars and amino acids and creates hundreds of flavor particles, making anything it happens to taste SO much better! However, you've gotta be careful so that nothing burns. This is a delicate process!
4. After they've sat for a bit, toss in the herbs and peppercorns, scrape them up and around and then dump in some pipe stock (water he he). I don't really know how much, but you definitely want to cover the veggies and then you should probably triple that I guess.
5. Turn the heat up to high, get it to a boil and then rock the heat down to medium, maybe even a smidgen below that.
6. Let this simmer for 1-2 hours, stirring if you feel like it every now and then. I know I like to, it lets me smell how things are going, as well as feel how cooked everything is. Also let's face it, it's just so much fun to swirl things around in liquid.
7. After you've cooked it for long enough you need to strain it! If you're lucky you'll have some fancy shmancy strainer that costs like $90 at the cookery store. However, my colander has relatively small holes, so I used that. What you need to do is get all the vegetables and herbs out of the broth. If you have cheesecloth, this works SUPER well!
8. Strain it into another pot and either use that or quickly rinse out the one you have and then return the newly created vegetable stock to it. Then, put the chicken carcasses in and, if necessary, add more cold pipe stock so that the level is about one inch (2.5 cm for our Euro buddies) above them. If you can't get it that high because your pot isn't deep enough then you need to get a new pot or just don't worry about it because it will be fine.
9. Bring the broth up to a boil and then drop it back to medium again.
10. Let it simmer for 1-3 hours! You can totally stir if you want, and I recommend flipping the carcasses over at least once, but it isn't super necessary.
11. Once your chosen time is up, strain it again!
12. At this point you can cook it down some more, or you can just throw it in the fridge. It is important to throw it in the fridge at some point because when it cools the fat will all be on top and you can scrape that off if you so desire.
13. What some people do is reduce it so much that it can fit into ice cube trays. This way, whenever they need stock they just take a cube or two of it and BAM they're good to go!
14. Whatever you decide to do will be fine I am sure. I have faith in YOU!

You can use the broth for SO much! Make soup with it as the base, make any number of sauces, make gravy by adding it to a roux, blah blah so much so much! You can even cook pasta or rice in it and they will absorb some of the flavor! It's so great to have around!

Recipe: Roasted Chicken & Vegan Stir-Fry w/ Rice (A Not So Vegan Meal)

So tonight was the big night! I don't know how much Jen actually learned from me about cooking, but I had a lot of fun and it was so super delicious. I kind of forgot that I was supposed to be teaching her how to cook and just acted like the chief like I normally do. Oh well, maybe she'll read foodgawker and tastespotting like I told her to and figure stuff out. Or whatever, you know.

That being said, here's the write up for the night! The total meal was as follows

1. Rosemary Sundried Tomato Roasted Chicken with Stuffing
2. Stir-Fry!
3. RICE!

Here's some recipes!


Rosemary Sundried Tomato Roasted Chicken with Stuffing
Chicken:

• Two 3-5lb chickens
• At least 6 pieces of sun dried tomatoes
  
• A lot of fresh rosemary

Stuffing:

• Veggie oil
• 1 small-medium yellow onion
• 1/2 green bell pepper
• 2 celery stalks
• 2 one inch thick slices of challah (As in, two pieces of bread that are each one inch in thickness or width)
  
• 3 button mushrooms
  
• small handful of craisins
• 1 egg
• S&P
• Thyme and/or Sage

Directions:

1. Heat up some oil (not too much! Less than you think you need!!!) in a pan on mediumish heat.
   
2. Dice up the onion, pepper and celery. Here is an example of some foreign workers doing it for me!
   
3. Sauté onion for 1-2 minutes and then add in pepper and celery and sauté for about 5 minutes, stirring a good bit.
4. Toast the challah. Set that timer thing between light and medium, leaning more towards medium.
5. Dice up the mushrooms.
   
6. Wash the craisins to get the added sugar off.
7. Take the veggies out of the pan and add to a mixing bowl with the mushrooms and craisins.
8. Take the challah out of the toaster and dice it pretty finely, but not too finely!
9. Add the challah and the egg to the bowl and mix everything together.
10. Season as much as you like and then let sit until you're ready to stuff your birds. MMMM it looks so good!
    

CHICKEN:

1. Preheat the oven to about 350F.
   
2. Put the tomatoes in a little bowl and put some hot water over them, covering them to rehydrate them as much as is possible.
   
3. Unwrap the birds and, if necessary, take the neck, heart, gibs, etc... out of the cavity and then rinse the inside and out of the birds off. Look it's me!
   
4. Pat the chickens dry and then work your hand under the skin on the breasts.
5. Tear the tomatoes in half and stuff them and the rosemary under the breast skin. Put in as much as you like, cooking (not baking generally) recipes (especially mine) are best used as guidelines!
   Here, the one on the left definitely has stuff under the skin, but I'm not so sure that the one on the right does yet. Pretty sure it doesn't in fact.
   
6. If you haven't yet, put your birds on foil on your baking sheet. Important step: Make sure the tray you're baking it on fits in your oven! If it doesn't, then use a smaller one.
   


• NOTE: Don't use a baking sheet, use some kind of deeper roasting dish! Also if want you can place the chickens on a bed of veggies, any kind!


7. Stuff in the stuffing! It's OK if you have extra, just bake it separately! Also, some people say to not pack it in too tight because it expands but this has never happened to me, so stuff it in well!
   
8. Put birds in the oven for about 60 minutes covered in foil, and then take the Internal foil off for at least another 20-30 minutes. This allows the skin to crisp up at the end!


• The temperature should be about 180F. I used italics because that's what the case on the cooking thermometer I bought said. I'd recommend it to you but you're better off getting an instant digital one honestly. I used to have one but am no longer certain of it's location.


9. After the birds have rested for 10 minutes you can either hack them apart yourself or get someone more learned to do it for you!
10. I recommend checking youtube if you (like me!) do not know how to properly carve a bird. I did not do this, but have plans to eventually.
    

Stir-Fry
Ingredients:
(You could really use whatever the hell you want here, this is just what I felt like buying at Redner's today. Also, I didn't have any soy sauce so teriyaki was used. It still tasted super awesome!)

• Veggie oil
  
• A tiny bit of ginger, maybe half a pinky knuckle
  
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 smallish yellow onions
• 2 carrots
• 1 big broccoli stalk!
  
• 2 celery stalks
• 1.5 green bell peppers (or a similar amount of any colors)
• 1 green zucchini
• A couple handfuls of snap peas!
• Teriyaki and/or Soy Sauce
• Sesame Seed Oil

Directions:

1. Cut up everything however you want it. Examples: Slices of carrots, half rings of onions, diced garlic, chopped peppers, etc... Oh, I use most of the stalk as well as all of the heads of the broccoli. I really love eating the stalk and you should too! It is really nice to have this all done before you start cooking so you're not rushing around watching the stove and chopping stuff up. It allows you to just toss it in, no worries. That is, unless you forget about the zucchini like I did...oh well that's what helpers are for!
   
   
2. Heat the oil over medium-high heat.
3. When hot, toss in 3/4 of the garlic and all of the ginger, stir constantly for about 10-15 seconds.
4. Add in the onion, stir well with garlic/ginger and let cook stirring occasionally for about 3 minutes.
5. Add in the carrots and broccoli and stir-them well. It's pretty important from here on out to be stirring a lot. Definitely not constantly, but try not to take your eye off the pan for more than 10 seconds or so. It isn't called stir-fry for nothing!
   
6. After a couple minutes add in the celery and pepper.
7. Again, a few minutes later add in the zucchini and snap peas and stir it in well.
   Sorry this picture sucks so much. I guess the camera just couldn't handle the beauty of my cooking vegetables. If you have really poor vision and don't wear glasses or contact lenses, this is pretty much what your stir-fry should look like at this point.
   
8. Dump in however much sauce you want, stir it up, turn the heat down and then put a lid on for like 5 minutes.
9. Before you serve put a teensy bit of the sesame seed oil in and stir it around to coat the veggies. DO NOT USE TOO MUCH. This stuff is really strong and should really only be used at the end of cooking to add a little more depth of flavor to the food.
10. Serve over/with the rice.

RICE
Ingredients:

• 1 cup of rice
• 2 cups of water
• Pinch of kosher (or whatever really) salt

Directions:

1. Um...cook the rice.
2. Haha, but seriously turn a burner on high and put all 3 ingredients in
   
3. When it starts to boil stir it a bit, turn it down to medium and cover it with a lid.
4. I'm sure some people will object to the next part, dunno, but this is how I do my rice.
5. Every few minutes or less stir the rice to ensure the bottom doesn't get burnt and crusty (this is NOT paella).
6. When there isn't too much water left in the pot I generally take the lid off and allow some of it to evaporate, but you should definitely test the doneness of your rice. If at this point there's still a tiny little bite (hardness) to it then you're a-ok!
   I have a picture of the rice in the pot, but I don't feel that it's necessary to put it up. Let me know if you feel otherwise!
   
7. Server this under/around the stir-fry.

Well, this is my first ever real write up of a meal I've done and I guess it's looking pretty dandy! Overall even though there wasn't really any consistent theme to the meal, it tasted really good and everything seemed to come out about perfect! I'd like to thank Jen and Jesse for helping me out, as they were great! Also Jimmy for reimbursing me!

A good treat after you eat is to go to Dairy Queen and get a Chocolate Covered Cherry Blizzard! It is delicious, especially when it is also covered by the school.


If I had to do anything better next time, I think it would be planning out what pictures I want to take in advance. This time it was mostly willy-nilly and I think this post definitely suffered for it. Not a lot, but it definitely could've had some more relevant pictures.

That being said, here's the two carcasses I butchered because I don't know how to carve birds AT ALL. It was still REAL tasty though!


P.S. guys, you should for sure use those chicken carcasses to make stock! Click here to find out how!

Teaching Someone How to Cook

So a friend of a friend, who I guess will be a friend soon enough, asked me to teach her how to cook. This will be happening on Thursday evening, after my computer science problem solving class. Since it was at the dining hall I agreed readily enough so I could go back to my table and eat, but after having some time to think about it I find the task to be a fairly overwhelming.
The idea in of itself is fairly simple; I just need to show someone how to combine ingredients with heat to produce something edible and tasty. However, in preparation for this I began thinking about how I first learned to cook. After a bit of reflection I realized that there was really no way I could just teach someone to cook in one night, especially since I don't want to use any recipes.


What I think will help is just writing out a brief history of me in the kitchen. At the very least it'll allow me to sort of peer behind and look at how I've gotten to where I am right now

I started cooking when I was really young. I'm sure my parents might be able to give me a decent age range, but I have no clue how old I was when I started helping out in the kitchen. My oldest (I think, it's certainly the most vivid) memory of cooking is of a time when I was making cookies with my mom and I touched the pan they were on right after she got it out of the oven. It hurt like hell and my mom taught me how to deal with burns by running room temperature water over it and then treating it with some cream. Clearly this is not getting off to a running start, but at least it taught me some respect for my tools.

My next memories, which I know for a fact are from elementary school, are me running "experiments" on food. Generally, these would just be me playing with food coloring on/in whatever my mom had made for dinner. A lot of times I would also do this to her food for lunch the next day. I distinctly remember my mom bringing orange colored chicken, blue mashed potatoes and something that was probably green to school for lunch. I doubt I was doing any actual cooking at this point, but I am positive that they were fun at the time.

I soon entered the actual realm of food preparation. I began cooking stir-fry for the family dinners, something very simple and super fun to make. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I just began experimenting with whatever spices my mom had around. Sometimes this would turn out pretty well I'm sure, but this wasn't always the case. Once the vegetables were so heavily spiced that no one could eat it. I clearly remember trying to keep going with it, but, it was just too much spice for one little kid to handle.

It would be about this time that we started cooking fish for almost every Sunday dinner. I'm not really clear why we did it, but it quickly became the "thing" we did for that dinner. In fact, my mom and I even had a little joke whenever we were cooking halibut which was "Let's do it just for the halibut!" Say it out loud a couple times and if you still don't get it, just ask me. Another favorite fish to make (still is to this day!) for us was salmon. In fact, I even made up my own recipe for a sort of honey bbq salmon! I developed the sauce I use by literally just chucking sauces from the fridge into a bowl and then mixing and tasting until I found a taste I like. Smear this on top of salmon fillets, top with drizzles of honey and onion flakes and you are set! I can still make it exactly as I used to, but don't always have all the ingredients and thus must improvise. I'm sure someday I'll so a write-up on here, but that's certainly for another time!

At about this point in my life I was about to or had entered high school. This is a period of my life most noticeable for intense apathy and a sudden love of those $0.16 packages of Top Ramen noodles. I originally would just make it as it was on the package, but one day my friend Leif clued me in to a little secret of success in the instant noodle soup world. Soy sauce! Once I tried making ramen with soy sauce in it there was no turning back. Unfortunately, even though this sort-of-epiphany came relatively early in the game, it wasn't until a couple of years later that I would start to experiment more with ramen. Eventually hot sauce, black pepper, butter, cheese and sometimes even lunch meats would be tossed into the mixture in an attempt to better the salty death that american instant ramen is. I can't think of them now, but this is in no way a thorough list of what I would try adding to ramen.

Haha, looking back on this last paragraph is really making the pretentious foodie in me cringe at my younger self. However, that's really what I was into during high school so I've gotta put it up here. What I find really interesting about it though, is that even though I was just boiling water and dumping in noodles and flavor packets, I still started to experiment with different flavor and texture combinations. Even with one of the lowest types of food available in a super market, I still tried a ton of stuff in an effort to make whatever I was eating more interesting.

Eventually I went off to college and my first two years there are almost indistinguishable in that pretty much zero cooking (Not really counting ramen and easy mac at this point) happened excepting a tiny bit I did in Musser second semester my sophmore year. I forget exactly what we had, but I know I made soup a few times as well as doing an end of the year meal for us band kids.

My junior year was great however! Reeves, Schaeffer and I moved into an apartment down main st that was in a house that had 4 of our really good friends living in it! Luckily for me, there was a kitchen for every apartment in the house! I started doing "Friday Feasts", originally planned to be once a month but instead turned out to be 2-3 a semester. At the end of fall semester I (with much help from Molly) did an Italian feast consisting of fresh bread, bruschetta (not trad), vegan pasta sauce, 2 types of pasta, chicken siena and a fruity ricotta cheese dip. I have since made that meal twice more (without the ricotta stuff) and it is a huge hit every time! Another recipe I'll have to do a write up here for is the chicken siena, that stuff is banging!

Over the course of this and last school year I've learned a ton about cooking. Some is definitely due to hands on experience making food that looks really good to me. However, a lot of how I cook comes from reading Goons With Spoons, too many blogs, TasteSpotting, FoodGawker, cookbooks and food literature, whether it is about food preparation, history, the industry, a mindset or becoming more conscious of what you eat and where it comes from.

I think what this whole thing really boils down to is this. There is no way I can possibly fit all of this, this love and passion that I have for food, no way I could make her understand what a pot of boiling water for pasta or a crackling pan full of hot oil and vegetables means to me in 90 minutes. How can I explain that the simple act of sitting down and slicing and dicing vegetables is something that I not only look forward to and love doing, but that it almost always calms me down, relieves stress and just generally lifts my spirits. Or how about the many hours I've just spent reading recipes and other people's thoughts on food? This I feel is the integral part of who I am as a cook today, but I don't think just anybody can sit down and read recipes off the internet for 3 hours chunks of time.

Is it possible for me to convey all of this over the course of cooking one fairly simple meal? Despite all of the above, I would argue that yes it is. Granted I will not be able to make her understand just how important it is for me to sit down every now and again and just make food, but I am absolutely positive that she will not only come away from this with a solid foundation for food experimentation, but at a little more respect for what goes onto her plate and into her mouth. I already know that I am going to hype local food to her, and stress the importance of trying to get to know who and where your food comes from. It may be hypocritical now as I do not know any of this, but I feel that if I can stress it to a non-foodie then she may influence a portion of her friends to at least think about seeking out this knowledge the next time they go shopping. Anyways, I've already got a CSA picked out in case I get into grad school, so back of critics!

While I do not know just how much of the love and passion I have for what goes on in the kitchen I'll be able to communicate on Thursday, I'm pretty sure that we'll pull out a banging meal that she won't soon forget. Since I forgot to mention it, we are making the following:

• Roasted Chicken
• Sundried Tomatoes & Fresh Rosemary under the skin
• Stuffing: challah, onion, celery, green pepper, craisins, mushrooms, S&P and sage
• Stir-Fry
• Carrots, onion, garlic, green pepper, snap peas, zucchini, soy sauce
• Rice

I would sincerely love any and all comments. If you don't wanna comment, email or just talk to me.