The holidays are finally over!

December is finally over and while the holidays can be a great time of year, they tend to be so busy that getting regular things done gets difficult. While I did a fair bit of cooking, no progress was made in the book. I did cook several recipes from the book though, those that have become favorites.

To make up for the fact that I let an entire month of opportunity to cook from the book go by I spent New Year's day preparing a recipe from one of the three chapters that I had not cooked anything from. I'll post soon but I was very pleased with the results.

Anyway, I hope for these next few months to be packed full of cooking goodness because something tells me I will be very busy starting at the end of February.

Happy New Year!

It’s My 1st Blogaversary!

Wow, I have actually stuck with something for a year! I am impressed with myself and I have a renewed vigor to make more recipes this next year than I did this past year. While 365 days may seem like a lot of cooking time it only translated for me into 95 recipes from the book. But they have been an interesting bunch for me. I started this blog with hummus, white rice and peas, to my more impressive dishes of Gumbo, Pan-Roasted Halibut Steaks and Pad Thai. I still won’t classify myself as more than mediocre but I have learned a lot in the process of writing this blog. So what have I learned?

1. Where Food Comes From: I am not some kind of food snob that only eats local or shies away from unsustainable food. But I do appreciate where my food comes from, the process involved in getting it to my table and the content of the food. I try to make better selections from my supermarket and I am really trying to learn the seasons for my vegetables.

2. Nutrition: I don’t believe all fat is bad or that sugar must be avoided. But understanding its effect on my family and its role in our health has become important to me. Sometimes full fat is better than the chemical alternatives… sometimes it’s not.

3. Food Likes/Dislikes: I am absolutely appreciating trying new foods. Things I thought I disliked I find I enjoy and even those I still dislike I am beginning to tolerate.

4. Confidence: I don’t feel as inept in the kitchen as I used to. I figure I still have a long way to go before I can truly begin leaving the recipes behind and creating unique meals on the fly.

I also figured this would be a good time to recap my top five recipes of the past year. These are the recipes that I have created numerous times.

1. Pad Thai: I never liked Pad Thai from a restaurant and never thought much of the dish until my wife asked me to make this. I’m so glad she did because I do love this recipe, with a few modifications of course. In fact the best compliment I have received to date was from my wife when she told me she preferred this to what she used to order in the restaurant. A true moment of pride.

2. Hearty Meat Lasagna: Absolutely the best meat lasagna I have had to date. It is meaty and not greasy and has great structure. The recipe feeds an army so we only cook this when more than us will eat it or I feel like eating it for a week.

3. French Onion Soup: Like it in the restaurant, love it at home. The smell while it cooks, the ability to control the cheese factor and the fact that I can create about 10 bowls of this stuff for the price of a bowl in the restaurant.

4. Buffalo Chicken Wings: I am a huge fan of chicken wings and now that I know how to create them at home just the way I love them is truly astounding! I’ve made several pounds of wings, probably over 20 lbs since I first made this recipe. In fact I bought a deep-fryer just so I could make these even easier.

5. Roast Leg of Lamb: While I have not made it again I was extremely proud of myself for cooking it so well. I absolutely intend to make this again for a special occasion.

I really look forward to tackling more recipes and I hope that I can complete more than 95 during this next year. I would like to finish this project in less than 10 years.

For all those that have been following along, THANKS!

** I have created an index of my progress by chapter which can be viewed in this Index of Progress post.

It’s Getting Dusty Around Here

Okay I somewhat apologize for my absence but these past few months have been hectic. I work in the beleaguered auto industry for one of the recently bankrupt companies and while my job still remains and I am busy in spite of all the doom and gloom, the stress does take a toll and you end up watching the pennies a little more. On top of that, we had several large outdoor projects to accomplish around the house this year which consumed a lot of time and money… but with all these excuses I am still excited to cook and look forward to a hopefully more relaxing summer with the opportunity to get in some serious grilling (a chapter of the book I have not cooked much from yet).

So for those who still check in every once and a while. Thanks for your patience and the posts should start back up soon!

E-Award!

Thank you Cecil of FoodCraze! You have been a reader from the beginning and your creations have inspired me to look beyond the food I know to the world of fine cuisine that all cultures have to offer. The food you prepare makes the stuff I attempt look easy (but for those following along not everything that looks easy has been easy for me). So thanks again for this award! I finally feel like I am earning some blog cred!

But of course this award leaves me with a bit of a dilemma. Who do I award it to? I am new to blogging but I haven’t been reading food blogs for a long time either. So my exposure to the incredibly immense volume of blogs is pretty limited. But I do have a few that I find inspirational. And if Cecil hadn’t given the award to me she would have been at the top of my recipient list for the award back!

Let’s start with…

Kevin at Closet Cooking. This was one of the first blogs that I came across in the summer that hooked me into the world of food blogging. His minimalist blog lets each recipe shine. I was as much inspired by the food as the photos and it was his recipe for hummus that started me down this journey. So thank you Kevin from myself and my family (that get to eat the food you inspired me to make). I’m sure you’ve received these awards before but here is another one!

Deborah at Taste and Tell. When I was surfing the blogs before I had one I came across her preparation of the Meat Loaf from the New Best Recipe, one of the first recipes I would blog about. I am drawn towards blogs that are more than just recipes and Deborah’s fits that nicely. I also appreciate that the food is approachable with the understanding that while we would all love fresh ingredients, and to make everything from scratch the real world doesn’t always give us time. Deborah knows that and provides us with tasty recipes that are practical for a busy life!

Mandy at Home with Mandy. Just recently started reading her blog but I find her blog very entertaining. I really enjoyed the peek inside her fridge. Of course no one will ever see the disaster that I call a fridge!

Laurie at That’s Not What The Recipe Says. Another recent addition to the blogs I follow but her adventures recently in the kitchen when attempting to make fresh ravioli sounded very much like an experience I would have!

Jessica at The Joy of the Joy of Cooking. A fellow cook-through blogger I started reading her blog near the end of her time in Japan. I find her honest approach to cooking (and the difficulties faced in high altitude cooking) refreshing and entertaining. Congratulations to Jessica and Josh on their engagement and I continue to look forward to reading their adventures through the Joy of Cooking.

Adam at Gourmet, All The Way. Another cook-through blogger he is tackling the Gourmet Cook Book. Since he has only recently started I find it very inspiring to follow along to see his process for selecting recipes. He also tends to have some funny anecdotes about the recipes along the way.

This is where I feel bad because I feel I should include every blog I read but for me these seven above strike a particular chord with me and why I am blogging in the first place. Thanks for all the great reads and I look forward to many more!

By the way, this award comes with rules, here they are: Please find at least 10 more blogs of any kind which you deem to be excellent; but hey if you only come up with 3 or 5, I don’t mind. Post about the blogs you picked, linking back to me and to them. Once you’ve posted, return here to let me know your post is up, and of course let your 10 award winners know too.

How Did I End Up Here?

Welcome everyone to my first blog post! I have always had a fascination with food and especially cooking. I have a collection of cookbooks and magazines and I am a faithful viewer of ‘The Food Network’. In fact, I would be probably be quite happy if it was the only channel I had. My son on the other hand would probably have a fit without Playhouse Disney. Recently, I had discovered the absolutely thrilling world of food blogging. As I dove into this world I soon discovered a vast community of home cooks with little formal training other than a love for good food and the satisfaction of preparing it. Everyone has their own reasons but what I took away from it was an inspiration to do it myself. So I kept telling myself I should start a blog. But that wasn’t enough… yet

Anyway despite this interest in the culinary arts, I am a less than stellar cook. The basics often elude me (such as cooking chicken and blanching vegetables) and I feel proud whenever I throw more than two things together in a pan and call it dinner. Prepared meals are a frequent staple in our kitchen. It was on a recent grocery trip that another incident started pushing me to do this blog. We passed by some hummus and my wife asked me to grab it. That day I had read a recipe for hummus on a food blog, Closet Cooking, and thought to myself “why buy hummus for $5 when I can make it for $10”. So defying all economics based logic I grabbed the ingredients to make my own (I have a decent memory for things, in a list of 10 items I will remember all but the most crucial). I’ll actually post more on this event in a later post but let’s just say it turned out very well, and nobody was unhappy about my choice to make hummus.

It was a small recipe but it definitely made me feel a sense of accomplishment. But I still wasn’t blog ready. I mean a bad cook writing about his mediocre attempts at cooking just wasn’t enough for me… I needed a gimmick. And that gimmick came in the form of Carol’s French Laundry at Home. I loved the concept of cooking every recipe in a book and while ‘The French Laundry Cookbook’ was well above my capability, Teena’s The Gourmet Project tackling the mammoth ‘The Gourmet Cookbook’ brought me down to a more realistic level. But that wasn’t the book for me either. I have several of the ‘Best’ series of cookbooks from The Editors of Cook’s Illustrated and I love them. The recipes are great but it is the instruction and explanation of every dish that I enjoy. It lets me understand why a recipe is prepared a specific way and how the ingredients come together. It brings out the scientist in me and brings back memories of university chemistry labs. So there it was, the book (or series of books) that I was going to use to get started. In particular I was going to focus on ‘The New Best Recipe’ book. The ‘Best’ recipes cooked by the worst cook. Well maybe not the worst, just a mediocre cook.

And I guess that is how I ended up here… I love food, I want to be a better cook, and since everyone eats to live (except for the true food aficionados living to eat!), it’s not like I wasn’t ‘cooking’ before. At least now hopefully it will be better and more exciting, and my family will enjoy it.

So I hope that this continues for awhile. Thanks for stopping in and I hope to see you back.

Index of Progress

Appetizers

31.4% (11/35)

Soups

17.9% (7/39)

Salads

13.6% (8/59)

Vegetables

27.8% (37/133)

Rice and Grains

20% (6/30)

Pasta and Noodles

13.1% (8/61)

Poultry

36.8% (25/68)

Beef

25.6% (10/39)

Pork

16.7% (6/36)

Lamb

23.1% (3/13)

Fish and Shellfish

14.6% (7/48)

Stews

0% (0/13)

Grilling

18.3% (21/115)

Eggs and Breakfast

34.4% (11/32)

Pizza, Calzones, and Focaccia

20% (6/30)

Quick Breads, Muffins, and Biscuits

7% (3/43)

Yeast Breads

12% (3/25)

Cookies, Brownies, and Bar Cookies

7.8% (4/51)

Cakes

6.4% (3/47)

Pies and Tarts

8.1% (3/37)

Crisps, Cobblers, and Other Fruit Desserts

11.1% (2/18)

Puddings, Custards, Souffles, and Ice Cream

2.7% (1/37)