I love food.

There is nothing more pleasing to the senses than a bite of something extra delicious. :)
Unfortunately, I'm a terrible cook. Ever since I was in elementary school, I've always tried to emulate people on cooking shows. I would make a mess out of the kitchen by pre-measuring all the ingredients and setting them out in little bowls (cooking shows make it seem like the cool thing to do). I would enjoy the process--"let's add a little dash of pepper," "now here we have finely diced tomatoes,"--but I never seemed to get the end product right. And by that, I mean that my food tasted horrible.
Even around holiday season, my friend and I would get together to bake cookies. One batch was supposed to be double chocolate chip, and turned out an odd shade of shiny black. The other batch caught on fire.

But all this hasn't deterred me from my lifelong goal of cooking fabulous food. Ever since my father unexpectedly left my mother and I on June 18th, 2009, I've been cooking just about every night. My mother lost 13 lbs in the span of a month when she found out about my dad's affair. When he left in June, she lost her appetite again and stopped eating, save a few spoonfuls every now and then.

I recalled my disaster days in the kitchen, and how my parents would eat everything that I cooked with smiles on their faces and heaps of praise. Ah Ha! A mother can't turn down her daughter's cooking. I've used this to my advantage, and have been greatly improving my skills ever since. Besides, I have to learn how to cook somehow, otherwise I'll starve to death in my apartment next year.

Enjoy!
-jNN
_____________________________




Wednesday, July 22, 2009

i love colorful food...

naturally coloredfood. This is a beautiful beautiful dinner, and makes me happy on such a grey, stormy and rainy day (boo Ohio). So we have roasted veggies: zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, red bell peppers, baby bella mushrooms and onions. These are super fabulous and easy--I used a little olive oil, added a little salt and pepper, rosemary and garlic, then popped them in the oven for 30 minutes.

This was a great opportunity to re-make my granola too, since both have to go in the oven and be stirred every 10 minutes. This time, my granola has raisins, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds. I didn't use as much brown sugar to give it more of a nutty flavor instead of a sweet candy-type taste.

I cooked the pasta, gave it a cold rinse and then heated it up with some chicken broth. I added some diced roma tomatoes (still on the vine!) steamed broccoli, and freshly ground pepper.












Posted by jNN at 4:27 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)