I have a confession to make. I am a twenty-six year old woman who is jealous of our current generation of eleven year olds. When I was eleven years old, I had Rachel Ray’s Thirty Minute Meals to teach me how to cook. There were no kids my age on TV, no one there to show me that I too could do it. I have very clear memories on giving up on being a professional chef in order to pursue a more traditional educational path that never panned out for me. Every time I turn on Master Chef Junior, Chopped Junior, etc, I think about what eleven year old Theresa would have thought of these kids. Eleven year old Theresa would have wanted to be in those kitchens. Eleven year old Theresa, who burnt her parents’ tongues off with steak that has too much cayenne on it, would have seen in those kids people to look up to-- People like her who made it happen. I am simultaneously very proud of these kids that put out food that honestly makes me look like a goddamn amateur and very, very jealous of the opportunities that came into existence for them. These things did not exist for a whole generation of hopeful cooks like me who gave up too soon. I’m so proud of these kids, even when I have a slight pang of jealousy in my heart. While I will always wish that this culture of hope in the next generation had been birthed early enough for me to try and get on board when I was as dedicated to cooking as some of these kids, there is nothing more inspirational than watching a twelve year old make a three course meal for Gordon fucking Ramsay. If they can do that, I can at the very least cook dinner more than two days in a row.
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You may have noticed it’s been a little quiet around here lately. I go through spurts of activity naturally, but I’ve also started a new journey in my normal 9-5 career. I am officially working toward getting my CPC, Certified Professional Coder, certification for medical billing. It’s been a shocking amount of work that I can only slot into the time I usually give to my writing, so for the next few months, things will not be as prolific as they were near Christmas.
Some of the projects promised at the beginning of the year remain on the table. I started with a cookbook from the large supply of old cookbooks that my father-in-law gifted to me during our trip. The first of those cookbooks should be well reviewed by the end of February. There are a few stand out recipes that I’ve already added to my weekly rotation more than once! Restaurant reviews will come in much more slowly. My husband and I have agreed to cut back our spending in terms of eating out. We’ve a fun vacay planned for the first week of March that will be the opposite of those first two sentences, but after that, it’ll be pretty quiet on the restaurant front. Food at home is becoming a priority, which means… ORIGINAL RECIPES, FINALLY. The first should land this week. A lot of these recipes will be riffs on meals I’ve taken from some of my cookbooks of the month to use in my home more frequently. This is a food blog, after all. I should be doing some of my own cooking for you, not just reviewing cookbooks. As I always do when something that slows me down is going on, I wanted to thank you, readers, for sticking around. It’s that time of year again. A new year has come, and like almost everyone, I’ve made a list of resolutions to change my behaviors in 2019. These are but a few of them that I’ve made in regards to food and cooking. We all come into the new year thinking to lose weight and eat healthier, but that's a goal I fail every time. These goals are those I think I can meet, applying to both eating habits and blog.
I had more than one month where I failed to cook my way through the books I chose. I don’t want to fail again. The good news is that I have more than one book on my shelf that still needs review. I want to be able to look back on a whole year not just a handful of months when December comes back around. 2. Grow my kitchen tools collection. I have my dutch oven and my immersion blender, but I still find recipes where I need new tools and pans. Oven proof ramekins, etc, to help me expand into new and different types of baking: savory baking specifically. I’m eying a pot pie recipe hella hard, and I find myself complaining that I need new stuff to get it done. 2018 was a good year for food. The amount of traveling that I did opened up my experiences in a way I had not experienced for most of my life, and this included trying new things and new restaurants that I would not have imagined possible before now. Delaware made a lot of things possible, namely experiencing food as it exists on the east coast. It isn’t all that different from the Midwest (not really. East Coasters will pretend to be superior), but the variety is extreme.
I am looking forward to continuing my food adventures in 2019 at new and better locations. Keep an eye for some restaurants that will be on my watch list for future visits to Baltimore, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. My father-in-law is an avid auction fiend. He comes home with boxes full of crazy stuff, and over this Christmas, he presented me with a collection of cookbooks and cooking pamphlets he had collected over the years. Some of them were downright laughter inducing, especially ‘Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese’ from the American Dairy Association. There were some, however, that I’ve decided to take back home with me for further study. I went to school for publishing. One of my favorite classes of all time was bibliography, and these old books scratch that itch. He had a copy of ‘The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book’ from Fannie Merritt Farmer circa 1896 that I will be shipping back to myself in Delaware. In fact, let’s just make a list of these interesting books that will be coming up in 2019 as specials, not cookbooks of the month.
There’s something very interesting about going back in time via these cookbooks. The Thrifty Cooking for Wartime book has information toward the front that is just a sign of the times which people of this age would never consider. Coming to my mother-in-law’s house is always an adventure when it comes to food, and this is an adventure that I look forward to taking home with me. So thanks to Paul, my father-in-law, who kept some of these gems back long enough for me to raid his collection. Let’s do some old cooking! |
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