Reclaiming Cooking

A few weeks ago, I made mushroom and goat cheese quesadillas… which makes me sound way fancier than I actually am. I just had some leftover goat cheese on hand and didn’t want it to mold, and I adore mushrooms. There’s nothing that makes me feel like more “chef-like” than when I’m sautéing mushrooms in butter (mmmm… butter).

Yum.

Mushrooms + butter = fancy. Basic math.

But again, that still makes me sound fancier than I am. I’m not one of those people who regularly has goat cheese on hand, trust me. I usually just have cheddar and some sort of shredded Mexican blend. Not even white cheddar… I can’t afford that stuff. But I had leftovers on hand because a few days prior to that, I made one of the fanciest dinners I’ve made in a loooong time – fresh bruschetta, bacon-wrapped scallops with chili butter, and red pepper and goat cheese risotto. How’s that for fancy pants? It was pretty much amazing. Expensive, but definitely amazing.

Ignore the burned bread.

(Quick note: I got the bruschetta idea from Julie and Julia: you know that scene where Julia decides to start her blog and she made bruschetta and had bread toasting in butter in a skillet on the stove? And then her husband ate it like a pig and talked with his mouth full and it was kind of revolting? Seriously, that actor is a really gross on-camera eater. Pay attention next time. Or don’t. Anyway, I love that scene… it makes me so dang hungry every time. Food scenes from movies are pretty much the best, aren’t they?)

Anyway, don’t go thinking I make meals like that all the time. I don’t. But I’m hoping to do more of them. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been rather unmotivated lately, and for awhile, cooking stressed me out more than relaxed me. I was a frantic cook, never prepping ahead of time, so I was always scrambling to finish dicing onion before the garlic burned in the pan, or frantically shredding cheese while the eggs solidified. I was a mess, and I kind of started resenting the cooking process.

So I turned into a complete snooze of a cook. I made boring things and didn’t look up recipes and just basically had chicken or pizza a lot. Considering I have a collection of cookbooks and aprons and I worship at the altar of Julia Child and my kitchen is the most put-together room in my apartment (seriously, I have buy a new “must-have” cooking utensil every week), my lack of motivation made me sad. So I decided, out of the blue, to turn that around.

A creamer carafe counts as a must-have. Obviously.

I started googling recipes and reading my cookbooks and drooling over the photos posted on some amazing cooking blogs and decided that no recipe was too big or too small. I made a goal one morning while scanning The Pioneer Woman’s blog (which is fantastic, by the way) to try and cook a really nice, fancy meal at least once a week. Twice if I had the time, but definitely at least once. And for the rest of the meals, I vowed to use better ingredients and try and have some fun, as often as possible.

I mean, I still plan to make burgers, but maybe I’ll whip up some sort of special sauce for them or I’ll use a different cheese. Frozen pizzas are still okay, but I’ll add fresh veggies or extra pepperoni or more mushrooms. I’m not criticizing anyone’s cooking methods (heck, I recently had pizza rolls and beer for dinner), but for a girl devoted to the Food Network and who subscribes to a bajillion cooking magazines and who spends 90% of her time in Barnes and Noble in the cookbook section, cooking should really play more prominently in my life.

So over the last few weeks, I’ve been cooking better meals – fresher ingredients, new recipes – and I’ve been trying to experiment with spices and cooking methods and even *gasp* cooking without a recipe! Seriously, I made a skillet tuna casserole with a mushroom cream sauce that was divine and I did it just through experimentation!

I know what you're thinking. But this is not your grandma's tuna casserole. Trust me.

All this cooking is time-consuming, sure, but now that I’ve become better about planning ahead and prepping my ingredients, spending 2 hours cooking dinner has become fun and exciting again.

And holy moly, so has grocery shopping! I feel like I’m living in a movie, coming home with all my fresh produce and just-baked breads and (occasional) fancy ingredients. It’s crazy, and honestly, not that much more expensive than all the boring stuff I bought before. I’m just buying more “fresh” and less “pre-packaged.”

Yes, I took a photo of my groceries.

Since embarking on this new-lease-on-cooking venture, I’ve made the recipes already mentioned, plus some grilled southwestern wraps (om nom nom), eggs benedict (heck yes I made poached eggs and hollandaise sauce… from scratch (just the hollandaise from scratch; I bought the eggs. Not laying eggs here, I promise.)), shrimp and penne with tomato cream sauce, creamy chicken and rice casserole, peach pie, monster cookies, teriyaki chicken, and a breakfast grilled cheese that makes my mouth water just thinking about it! That’s a pretty good repertoire already, and it’s only just begun.

Grilled Southwestern wraps

Shrimp penne with a tomato cream sauce

Peach pie

There have been ups (that skillet tuna casserole I mentioned before, the heavenly red pepper and goat cheese risotto) and downs (the shrimp penne with tomato cream sauce that took ages to make and was pretty underwhelming, dropping the whisk from the hollandaise sauce on the floor/my foot, where it splattered across every low surface of the kitchen), but all-in-all, I think I’m happier, my stomach is happier, and my kitchen is happier (if a kitchen could express emotion, trust me, it would be happy).

Naturally, I was infected with the cooking bug right around the time that Rich started football season, so I’m pretty much cooking for myself (and I feel a little guilty that dinner has gone gourmet when he’s hardly around), but he gets a slightly more sane girlfriend (because I have a good hobby that’s keeping me occupied) and some tasty leftovers, so he really can’t complain! Plus, I like to think that I’m just perfecting the recipes and he’ll get the really good stuff later. That eases me of any guilt, anyway.

So there you have it, dear readers (if you’re out there): my renewed obsession with cooking, baking, and reading about cooking and baking! That’s pretty much been my life these last few weeks, and I think it’s a pretty good one. If you want any of the recipes that I’ve made, I can get them to you, and maybe down the line when I get better about updating, I’ll post recipes with photos. For now, here are my new favorite cooking blogs:

The PioneerWoman
Smitten Kitchen
Joy the Baker

Warning: those ladies are also fantastic food photographers, so don’t read their posts on an empty stomach!

I wish I had something wittier to close with, but I don’t. Naturally. So instead, I’ll leave you a few of my favorite quotes from none other than Julia Child:

 “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.” 

“Everything in moderation... including moderation.” 

“I made sure not to apologize for it. This was a rule of mine. I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make... Usually one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is vile... then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile and learn from her mistakes.” 

And my personal favorite:

“The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”