Last week for my birthday I received two books from my parents about food. Vegetable Literacy and The New Vegetarian Cooking, both written by Deborah Madison. I took that as a sign that this would be the perfect time to add in my goal of cooking one new dish every week.
I wrote in this goal on my list because it is a great way to stay excited about cooking. There is an unending field of knowledge about food all around us with people, in books, and on the internet. I am guilty of it myself but I believe the general consensus on cooking is that people feel like it is work, especially if they just got home from work. Perhaps if I set aside a time for cooking a dish I have never made before once a week it will feel more like fun. After all we set aside plenty of time to read books, learn, and do schoolwork. Why not set aside some time to learn a life skill? Why not set aside some time to create something wonderful and share it with someone else? Why not have some friends over, throw some tunes on, and chop and fling pieces of vegetables all over the kitchen?
Since my diet is now limited to vegetarian options I will concentrate more on ethnic cuisines that don't use a lot of meat. I'm excited to dive into Indian food and test my skills on that first. So here is to learning some new skills and feeding some hungry friends! If anyone has any great vegetarian suggestions please post a link below!
I wrote in this goal on my list because it is a great way to stay excited about cooking. There is an unending field of knowledge about food all around us with people, in books, and on the internet. I am guilty of it myself but I believe the general consensus on cooking is that people feel like it is work, especially if they just got home from work. Perhaps if I set aside a time for cooking a dish I have never made before once a week it will feel more like fun. After all we set aside plenty of time to read books, learn, and do schoolwork. Why not set aside some time to learn a life skill? Why not set aside some time to create something wonderful and share it with someone else? Why not have some friends over, throw some tunes on, and chop and fling pieces of vegetables all over the kitchen?
Since my diet is now limited to vegetarian options I will concentrate more on ethnic cuisines that don't use a lot of meat. I'm excited to dive into Indian food and test my skills on that first. So here is to learning some new skills and feeding some hungry friends! If anyone has any great vegetarian suggestions please post a link below!
End of Week 21 Update
I learned two important things in my first week of cooking a new dish. The first was how to cook Vegetable Korma. The second was that you probably shouldn't decide to triple the Vegetable Korma recipe before taking a look at the recipe. Can you guess what happened next? We were swimming in tumeric.
This goal turned out to be as fun as I thought it would. First I had to spend about 20 to 30 minutes wandering aimlessly around Oasis (an international foods store) before I finally got an employee to help me find Paneer (an indian cheese that tastes sort of like milk and crumbles like feta) and Cardamom Pods (just don't try them without cooking them down). After spending about 2 hours chopping up the vegetables, and sprinting back and forth between the recipe and my work station I arrived with the finished product (above). We had almost ten pounds of it so I put it to the test with my Burmese friend Henry to get a rating on the authenticity and he gave it the thumbs up so I considered it a success. Here is the recipe if anyone would like to try it!
End of Week 21 Totals
Soda - 0 ounces
Water - 74.89 Gallons
Liquor - 0 shots
Tea - 252 cups
Trips to unhappy places - Jimmy Johns (1)
$ to support neighbors = $373.39
Fried food consumption - 2 dorito chips
Breakfasts eaten - 98
Pushups - 1080 Crunches - 980
Days Flossed - 83 (missed one day)
Coffee - 0 cups
Sunrises attended - 10
Beers drunk - 0
Gallons of Trash Collected - 180
Items planted - 12 jalapenos, 12 bell peppers, 8 yellow pear tomatoes, 30 canna bulbs, 1 chinese pistache, 30 sensitive plants, 24 carolina reaper peppers, 12 ghost peppers, 31 scorpion peppers, 5 brussel sprouts, 12 tyria hybrid cucumbers, 14 congo watermelons, 6 hybrid prizewinner pumpkins, 45 devils tongue peppers, 14 black sea man tomatoes, 33 peruvian white lightning habaneros, 16 mammoth russian sunflowers, 30 big smile sunflowers, 100 zinnia's, 100 basil plants, 100 green onion plants, 12 chinese lanterns,
Letters written - 6
Meat eaten - none
Donations made - Bike the US for MS, Personal Mission Trip, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, Against Malaria Foundation
Movies watched - 0
Glasses of wine - 0
New dishes cooked - Vegetable Korma
I learned two important things in my first week of cooking a new dish. The first was how to cook Vegetable Korma. The second was that you probably shouldn't decide to triple the Vegetable Korma recipe before taking a look at the recipe. Can you guess what happened next? We were swimming in tumeric.
This goal turned out to be as fun as I thought it would. First I had to spend about 20 to 30 minutes wandering aimlessly around Oasis (an international foods store) before I finally got an employee to help me find Paneer (an indian cheese that tastes sort of like milk and crumbles like feta) and Cardamom Pods (just don't try them without cooking them down). After spending about 2 hours chopping up the vegetables, and sprinting back and forth between the recipe and my work station I arrived with the finished product (above). We had almost ten pounds of it so I put it to the test with my Burmese friend Henry to get a rating on the authenticity and he gave it the thumbs up so I considered it a success. Here is the recipe if anyone would like to try it!
End of Week 21 Totals
Soda - 0 ounces
Water - 74.89 Gallons
Liquor - 0 shots
Tea - 252 cups
Trips to unhappy places - Jimmy Johns (1)
$ to support neighbors = $373.39
Fried food consumption - 2 dorito chips
Breakfasts eaten - 98
Pushups - 1080 Crunches - 980
Days Flossed - 83 (missed one day)
Coffee - 0 cups
Sunrises attended - 10
Beers drunk - 0
Gallons of Trash Collected - 180
Items planted - 12 jalapenos, 12 bell peppers, 8 yellow pear tomatoes, 30 canna bulbs, 1 chinese pistache, 30 sensitive plants, 24 carolina reaper peppers, 12 ghost peppers, 31 scorpion peppers, 5 brussel sprouts, 12 tyria hybrid cucumbers, 14 congo watermelons, 6 hybrid prizewinner pumpkins, 45 devils tongue peppers, 14 black sea man tomatoes, 33 peruvian white lightning habaneros, 16 mammoth russian sunflowers, 30 big smile sunflowers, 100 zinnia's, 100 basil plants, 100 green onion plants, 12 chinese lanterns,
Letters written - 6
Meat eaten - none
Donations made - Bike the US for MS, Personal Mission Trip, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, Against Malaria Foundation
Movies watched - 0
Glasses of wine - 0
New dishes cooked - Vegetable Korma