Muppet: Chef Extraordinaire

Bork bork, children of the interwebs.


I know this isn't my usual chitter chatter, but as part of my previously mentioned things-to-change this year, I am experimenting with ::gasp:: cooking.

(The moose looks appropriately frightened).

I have always been notoriously bad at cooking. Notoriously.

In High School, I had to take a cooking class as part of required fluff. In the first week I made a baguette that was so rock hard, it spent the rest of the day being passed from person to person in the hallway, everyone wanting to be the one who could somehow, in some way, violently destroy it - and yet, it could not be destroyed. It was... unholy. The teacher eventually insisted that in exchange for not cooking, and just helping clean up, she would give me an A.

"Friends" is one of my favorite all-time shows, the receiver of much of my geek love. There was a joke on a Thanksgiving episode - Rachel is going to cook dessert, they're all discussing that cooking is maybe not her thing. So she says "what's so hard? You just read the recipe.. If it says boil two cups of salt, you just boil two cups of salt". Big laugh, and the opening credits. I NEVER got that joke. Heard it a million times, took me years before I realized why it was funny.

Notoriously bad at cooking.




Even though I am thoroughly against being an old school 50's wife with the pearls, vacuum cleaner and meatloaf warming in the oven, having someone to cook for did put a bit of a damper in the promise to my high school cooking teacher to never-ever-cook. Thankfully, he does enjoy cooking - but he works very hard, doesn't get home until at least 8 PM, I'm home all day being a tortured artist, and I can mass-produce guilt like nobody's business.

And so, after much trying, the acquiring of a house ( and for the first time in my adult, on-my-own life, a dishwasher) and a little thinking outside of the box, I'm actually kind of digging on cooking.

Plus, with new house expenses eating out 3 times a week is no longer practical, and seeing as I want to be in fighting-shape for pregnancy, eating homemade is just the way to go.




So, my dears, I am trying a lot of recipes. I've tried more recipes in the past 2 months than I had prior in my whole collected cooking life. So occasionally, I'm going to post the ones I try in here and tell you if they were gross, disastrous, wonderful, cheap, impractical, etc. etc. etc.



A few things you should know about the few-cooking opinions I have formed:


1). I'm somewhat of a picky eater (insert husband's indignant fist shake at that understatement). Some things gross me out, so I leave them out of recipes.

2). I really like finding recipes where there are very few ingredients/they're low maintenance. Definitely not everything I'm trying fits into that, but a lot of them do.

3). When there are more than 4 or 5 not-in-my-kitchen ingredients, I like recipes where the items you buy will be seen and eaten again. So if a recipe says "Cow hoof", for reasons 1 and 3 I move on. If it says "Greek Seasoning" ( which one of the latest ones did) and that's one of two new-ingredients, tops, I'll try it (which I did - and yum).

4). The good news is I live with a diabetic - well not good news, for good news for you-who-is-reading. It means pretty much every meal in my house has to have meat (or at least equivalent protein), starchy carbs ( rice/pasta/noodles, whatever) and lots of vegetables, plus not a shit ton of sugar, obviously, and we skim on fat and stuff where we can. So everything is pretty much diabetes-friendly, which means everybody-friendly.



So basically, for those of you not interested in cooking at all, I won't be offended if you skip my little cooking entries. For those of you who are super-chefs - share with me! And for those of you who are trying to or flirting with the idea of getting into cooking, are finicky eaters, or just low-maintenance cooks - me too, me too!




So, next blog entry, I will be starting my great big recipe-shares with what I did last night -
lately I've been having a love affair with casseroles. They're very appealing to me. Put a bunch of shit in one pan, bake it, and voila! A meal. Plus, the idea of putting a bunch of random individual items together and it coming out as one, entirely new thing is what makes cooking appealing to me in the first place - so casseroles really make me feel like some mad scientist.

Anyhoo - I had never had a ham casserole (pause for gasping), and this book said it had an easy one. And it was, it was!

Hold for original recipe and the Muppetized version.