Becoming a Cook

I wouldn't call myself particularly gifted, or overly skilled. Heck, I still grate off the tips of my knuckles regularly when using the box grater, and don't even get me started on my lack of knife skills. I'm still afraid of using the food processor. However, I have done what not many Americans tend to do, at least before starting a family for whom they have to regularly cook for: I have developed a repertoire.

Don't get me wrong, developing a repertoire is a challenge. Most adults you and I know probably have one to a limited extent. They can cook a certain kind of soup, or pasta, or meat dish. Maybe a specialty they dust off for company, or holidays. They fill the rest of their meals with a mixture of take out, boxes, frozen dinners, and cans. I know this was how I was raised, and how many of the people I know were raised (and are starting to raise their kids.)

It has its benefits. For example, most box dinners are easy to assemble. Early in my twenties, boxed chicken and dumplings was one of my regular meals about every 10-12 days. All I had to do was to open the packages in it and put them in a casserole dish in the oven. I didn't have to get out a cookbook, or figure out whether or not I had all the ingredients. Another regular choice was a frozen meal that held the ingredients for a stir fry for two, and for about 6 weeks, frozen fried chicken cooked in the microwave.

Other meals I got from my mom; jarred spaghetti sauce and boiled angel hair, or, for a little extra, pour it over noodles and put cheese on top and bake. Baked potatoes or English muffin pizzas made quick meals, or possibly a quick trip to the pizza place or Taco Bell. My specialties were my mom's lasagna and meat loaf, still using jarred sauce, fresh French bread, home made chicken soup, and my grandmother's cinnamon rolls. I'd usually top these off with a can of corn, lima beans, or green beans, possibly apple sauce. Sprinkle in a liberal amount of going out to eat, and family barbecues or pot roasts on Sundays and you have my diet. It wasn't surprising I put on 30 pounds; I don't know how I managed to take it off.

I also know why I was so bored with my food. Every new meal became a stress to me. What should I eat? What should I prepare? How do I get the nutrients I need? How do I limit calories/fat/etc.? Do I have all the ingredients? Do I have the energy to put them together and the time to make the food before I get so hungry I eat my arm off? More often than not I settled for Taco Bell, jarred spaghetti sauce on pasta, or oatmeal for lunch or dinner. These options were easy, and they were the reason I was able to put off for years developing my cooking skills.

It is also pretty hard work to develop a cooking repertoire. It has taken me about 3 years to get to this point, and I don't even feel I'm really done yet. I want to have a couple of summer soups up my sleeve, and I'm planning on cooking through a good number of seitan recipes to find my favorites. It also wouldn't hurt to find a way to make my own aloo palak. I'm still flirting heavily with Asian and middle eastern cuisine, not ready to settle down with a few good recipes yet.

But the point is, I have a good number of recipes that I can count on, time and again, to deliver for me. I know what goes into them, how long they take to cook, and which ones make good leftover. I know which ones will make a quick dinner when I'm starving, and which ones I make on Sundays to use for lunches and even faster dinners on nights I am simply exhausted. A good number of them are healthy, some are a little higher in fat and calories. All are things I love to eat, and there are enough to give me a good variety of nutrients, and for the sake of avoiding boredom. I know how to stock my pantry keeping all these things in mind. And I make them all from scratch. (Okay, I still rely on some canned beans, as well as store-bought ketchup, but you get the idea.)

You to can get to this level of lower cooking stress and higher enjoyment! I will teach you how, or at least, give you advice based on my experience, over the course of this month, to develop a reliable stable of home-made recipes. Face it, you'd rather be out enjoying the spring weather than spending extra time cooking this month, right?

The first step is finding about 3-4 soups you can rely on, something I will cover in the next post.

Marching Onward

I'm ending my run tomorrow as Elaine Harper in Arsenic and Old Lace and I've had a fairly good time, though I'd be happier if there were more than 20 people in the audience! I try out for Curtains tomorrow if I can make it there in time after the closing of my matinee.
In addition to that, I've been teaching and cooking up a storm, which is probably why I haven't written too much. Between rehearsal, work, and cooking, I've not had a lot of time to sit down and write about those things.
I went on a vegan cookie binge, thanks to Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar. So far my favorites include fig bars, carrot spice cookies, and cherry almond cookies. I still have a ton to go. Now I am on a vegan quickbread binge, and plan on making another loaf of blueberry whole wheat and cornmeal bread, which I find darn awesome. So far 500 Vegan Recipes has been the sponsor of much of my quick bread adventures, but now I'm starting to get a lot of inspiration from Kris Holchek's book and blog.
It's funny. Most of the last summer and fall (before the cold hit), I was perfectly happy with fruit, veggies, and beans making up my main foods, and the once weekly bread binge. Ever since the cold hit I've been a carb fool. Thankfully, I've been using a lot more whole grains than I used to, which doesn't make it health food, but it does make it healthier! It's a lot harder to stay with the weight loss goals while eating so much bread and cookies, you can imagine.
This winter I've also become a fairly decent soup chef, which is something I plan on blogging about soon too (unless I get a great part after my audition tomorrow! Wish me luck!)

In for the Winter

I love semester break. As a college instructor, it allows me to get more time to sleep in (if the dogs let me), re-commit to my exercise routine (I never really left it, just don't have enough time to do as many sessions as I'd like), and cook. Since I became a vegetarian right about the time this past semester took off, I haven't had nearly as much time to experiment with new recipes this past two months and change as I'd like, and especially since my cookbook retinue has just about doubled since then as well.

Over break I plan to spotlight a few of my new favorite recipes and cookbooks, as well as hone my repetoire. This week I am planning to cook through several recipes of seitan and compare, as well as start working on a little project of mine... collecting all my favorite, regular recipes in a binder for easy access. Each recipe has to be time tested (cooked at least 3 times) before landing a slot.

Today I'm making my favorite veggie split pea soup, a recipe from Robin Robertson's Vegetarian's Meat and Potatoes Cookbook, with a side of Brussels sprouts. Mmmmm. Both of these are new favorites from this year as well.

Favorites from 2010

I have done a lot of growing as a cook and a person over the course of this year. I discovered I actually liked vegetables. And salad. I became a vegetarian. I lost 17 pounds. I started doing theatre again after an absence from the footlights of over 13 years. I've taught some of my favorite classes so far and grown as a professor. I got a new puppy. It's been a grand year.

Yet since this is The Picky Gourmet and not The Picky Actor or Picky Prof, I've decided to recap some of my favorite new dishes that I've picked up this year.

Today I'm starting with what might be my favorite new comfort dish that I discovered this year which is as healthy as it is tasty, Colorful Kale Salad.

I've written before that my hubby and I decided this year to purchase a share in a CSA for the first time, and I learned a lot from doing so. I was forced to find recipes to make use of veggies I may not have decided to bring home on my own, and sometimes more than one or two recipes, in the case of veggies that seemed to come by the pound or the bushel. This is one of those recipes.

The original recipe came from a book called Greens, Glorious Greens by Joanna Albi and Catherine Walthers. It is a great little book that I found a variety of recipes for the generous greens I got this May and June, but Colorful Kale Salad, with a few tweaks, has by far seen the most action in my regular kitchen rotation. I now wonder how I ever lived without kale.

You start out with a large, flat and shallow pan. I use a cup or so of garlic broth, but the recipe uses water. I find that the garlic broth adds just a little extra depth of flavor, though when they were coming in our share too, I used a cut up garlic scape in water. Boil the water, and put in it the corn from about 1 cob and 1/2 cup of shredded or matchstick carrots. Place the lid on the pan and let it steam and simmer for 5 minutes. Then lift the lid, and place about 3 1/2 to 4 cups of kale on top, place the lid back down, and let it steam for 4 minutes. When it is done, serve right away with a slotted spoon to allow any leftover broth to remain in the pain, and sprinkle sea salt on the top to taste. This really makes enough for 2 or 3 as a side dish, but I put it all into a mixing bowl and eat it all at once. It's comforting, and cooked without added fat.

Kale has become a common ingredient in my kitchen, and although at first I thought I'd be overwhelmed by the stems I collected and froze to add to veggie stock, which I make home made weekly, I also discovered that my dogs love them too. When I cook kale they gather around my feet hoping for scraps. Any stems I reserve for stock which are left on the counter are liable to be stolen from that counter the moment my back is turned.

That is probably my favorite new dish of the year, especially when considering the nutrient to calorie ratio, but as I continue to reminisce, who knows what dishes might appear?

Changes

It wasn't a tough decision to make, and looking back, it seems as if I was headed there all along. About a month and a half ago, I became a vegetarian.

How is this a pre-ordained path? I'll re-examine for you some of the steps that led me here. Keep in mind that I'm a picky eater to begin with. There have been a long list of things that I don't eat. I don't like eggs, and will only ate them when they disappeared into a baked good. Most times, I don't like ground beef. Chicken is often prepared in very boring, tasteless ways. I hate fish. I don't like sausage, and refused to try things that have sausage in it.

Additionally, I knew that animal products are generally high in fat, lower in nutrient density, and combine that with the poverty I experienced in my twenties, I am not as experienced in cooking meat, and tried to add to my anorexic cooking skills and repertoire with vegetables more than with meat. I did this by venturing into vegetarian, and even vegan cooking. I owned no fewer than 4 or 5 vegetarian/vegan cookbooks when I went veggie, and already was experienced enough to have favorites out of each book. My CSA membership this summer took me a bit further into these experiments as well, forcing me to cook more with veggies.

Finally, I love animals. I love my dogs. One of my hobbies is reading books about dog behavior and psych, and a lot of these books also add info about the intelligence, emotions, etcetera, concerning other animals including the kinds of animals that we eat in the standard American diet. This has slowly added to my knowledge of those animals, simmering away at my conscience. I read a couple books about pigs in particular. But when I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer this fall, I finally could not take it any more. The explicit passages about the common practices in slaughterhouses and the factory farming industry pushed me the rest of the way. As I sat crying about how live pigs are tortured by slaughterhouse workers, it was time. I became a vegetarian.

I have been experimenting with more new recipes, getting more new books, and learning a lot about nutrition as well as cooking in general. I've dropped another couple of pounds. I've learned about the American food supply system things that I wish I didn't know. But as I look back on the last few weeks, I don't miss meat. I've cut eggs out of my diet as well, and am still eating cheese and sour cream, but I'm trying to eat less of them, and attempting to find alternatives as much as I can. I'm not ready to be vegan yet, but I'm doing something now rather than nothing at all. I'm glad to have a kinder diet, a healthier diet, a greener diet.

Addict

Various people will attest to it- for many years, I was a Taco Bell addict. It all started innocently enough, a bean burrito here, a bean burrito there. My mom would sometimes bring me one when I worked evenings at the thrift bakery and I'd open a package of Frito chips to eat with it. I'd squeeze out the middle and then use all but the thin layer of beans, cheese, and red sauce left in the tortilla as a dip for my chips. It was lovely. In college, one of my meals every day was one of these, with a Dr. Pepper, maybe two burritos (and sometimes, maybe two of my day's meals.) Maybe this seems a bit excessive, but it was a cheap meal (usually under 2 dollars), I found it tasty, and as time has gone on, I have even discovered I may be genetically pre-disposed to Taco Bell addiction. My uncle and grandfather are both big addicts as well, my grandfather even is known by name at his regular store. Needless to say, my family weren't going to give me an intervention.

After moving to a house and starting a graduate school many miles from the nearest Taco Bell, my Bell meals went down to 3-4 a week, sometimes less. I had just gotten married, and along with it received all the attendant kitchen gadgets, some new cook books, and even a bit of Suzy Homemaker leaning that made me feel that I should cook more. It didn't hurt that my new kitchen was bright, beautiful, and three times the size of that in my apartment, a kitchen that was so small I couldn't open the fridge door from some angles. Of course, there was the 7-week frozen fried chicken addiction which also distracted me from the Bell, but that is another story.

As time went on, I kept to a 3-4 Taco Bell meals a week regular schedule, phasing in and out of other food addictions. Bread Company vegetable soup. Trader Giotto's cheese pizza. Trader Ming's mandarin chicken. English muffin pizzas. Homemade Red Lobster cheddar biscuits. But change was in sight, no matter how unexpected. I started (after a divorce, of course) to date a man who could cook, and did. He knew a little something about cooking, and used quality ingredients.

At first this inspired dissatisfaction in me; my old stand by foods no longer tasted very good to me, and as of yet, we did not live together, so I didn't have an in-house cook to replace those foods with something better full time. This meant that I started cooking new recipes for myself more often, inspired by the boyfriend, now Husband, to use these quality ingredients and more healthful options. When we finally married and moved in to our new house with our lovely kitchen, this helped inspire me even further. Since we married, I believe I've only gone to Taco Bell a handful of times, and those times were when I didn't pack a lunch for work. They weren't very satisfying. Since we bought our house over a year ago, I don't think I've been to Taco Bell at all.

The happiest part of the story, is that I've found my replacement for my Taco Bell fix, and a much more satisfying and healthy one. In Viva Vegan by Terry Hope Romero, the Drunken Beans are an excellent filling for a home-made bean burrito. Toss it on a tortilla with a little sour cream and a veggie side dish, and this is a quick meal I can stand behind. The recipe takes all day to make (mostly sitting back and letting the beans cook time), and involves pre-making some seitan chorizo, but the quantity yielded is enough for me to make about 30 burritos, something that was very helpful when I was heading into tech week with the show I am currently in. It's a five minute dinner; reheat beans in mic, heat tortillas, and then eat. It's also a good alternative for when I've eaten soup for lunch or the last couple nights in a row since soup is usually what I eat for dinner if I'm busy.

Asian Dinner

Somehow I feel a little wrong cooking a vegan or vegetarian recipe with a side of meat, but it happens a couple days a week now that I'm finding so many good recipes in vegetarian and vegan cookbooks like the collards in Vegan Soul Kitchen and the tamarind lentils I made tonight from Veganomicon that it happens more and more. As long as I'm eating healthier on the whole I don't think it's incredibly bad.

So, tonight's dinner was tamarind lentils, mentioned above, and one more Robin Miller pork recipe, hoisin pork chops. One dish was more Indian inspired, the other Chinese inspired. I used a few new ingredients tonight, which was interesting. Tamarind is a nice flavor, garam masala also helped to round out the spicy-sweet lentil dish, and hoisin sauce is a pleasure, at least mixed in with a little orange juice and balsamic vinegar.

So far I have discovered a lot of new foods, healthy foods, as I have experimented. Granted, I have not commented on them as such during the course of this blog yet, but my palate and nutrient base has been expanded. Instead of eating only one kind of green in two dishes (a soup and a salad that used baby spinach) now I also have several recipes for cabbage that I enjoy such as won ton soup and cayenne coleslaw, and citrus collards, as well as experimenting with mustard greens and kale. I enjoy a couple of tempeh recipes so far, with home-made barbecue sauce, and hoppin' john. I've been making my own vegetable stock almost every week to have it on hand, using collard stems and other basic ingredients, which has also been more fulfilling to used than the boxed stuff.

Husband and I are getting a share in a csa this summer, and the first box comes next week. I am even more excited about trying new recipes I wouldn't have thought of without getting some fresh from the farm. In addition, I've started to make a list of recipes I will be trying this summer so that I branch out even more, and don't have to look too far to find one that I've been interested in trying out.

I feel like worlds are opening up before me. For many years, when I would agonize over what to eat for dinner, and settle for Taco Bell, a baked potato, or cereal for dinner if I didn't have money for a frozen pizza or want to spend money on one from a pizzeria. Occasionally I would make meat loaf or spaghetti, or make dinner from a loaf of bread. I've been cooking for years, but it was usually confined to breads and deserts. Now, however, my horizons keep expanding further and further. I like more food than I thought, and I'm eating better, too.