Cooking

I love to cook. B does too.

Most of our favorite wedding gifts involve our kitchen and we try to make dinner (with plenty of leftovers for lunches) several nights a week. B can whip up a mean brunch. I've written about food a bit, in part to show off but also to share ideas.

I try to be fearless in the kitchen. My mom is an amazing cook and her mom never cooked! Seriously! Her best recipe, as recalled at her memorial service when I was in elementary, was to preheat the oven and call the local fried chicken place. (You keep fried chicken crispy, warm and happy in an oven, you know.)

While I was growing up my mom made everything... pumpkin bars, cookies of all sorts (especially chocolate chip cookies, which come from the best dough EVER), casseroles, kabobs, pasta, lasagna, stir fry, oven fried chicken, and so much more. There's no possible way to describe my mom's cooking. She's just wonderful - one of those cooks who tosses things in, just knows when things are done, cooks with a rhythm. (I think she shivers when she sees me peeling potatoes - but she still lets me help.)

B and I are bold cooks. We eat late in the evening - grating Parmesan freely, stealing basil from our neighbor, forgoing recipe rules and laughing at each other. B's still not at all comfortable with all my additions and omissions - I can admit I once made brownies, as a preteen, without oil thinking they'd be healthier (they're actually so terrible that you consider eating a stick of butter - lesson learned). But I'm smart cook these days.

B even gets nervous when I'm making my mom's recipes. She tends to assume we all know what she knows - "Cook them until they look done" or "Add 2 tablespoons or more."

At this very moment I'm attempting to replicate Kolokytho Keftedes from a Greek restaurant we love. I googled the dish and found exactly one recipe. I got the basic idea, made something approximately like what the recipe described and I'm going to cook them. Until whenever they look done.

Today's photo demonstrates another important element of delicious-meal-making, or enjoying. Whatever. It's actually from Bin 36 and I can't wait to go there again!