Fancy Foods Week

Some important disclaimers: (1) it is hardly a week when truthfully I am only doing two days of fancy foods, and (2) they are hardly fancy foods.

Nonetheless! We have approached this week with gusto and grocery shopping and decided on two new recipes to try. Yankee Pot Roast Stew and Orange Chicken in Pasta. Oh, and maybe some beer bread later on.

Yankee Pot Roast Stew was a successful venture on Tuesday and one that will be repeated. We haven’t done much so far in terms of soups or stews and this one was a long time coming to beat back the winter weather (not our winter of course, but boy it sure was a cold week in the midwest. Don’t know how we survived!). It was a pretty simple recipe, but it was my first ever 2+ hour cooking experience.

Some facts about myself as a cook:

-I am terrible at planning ahead. I’ve been quick enough about everything that this has never really hurt any of the meals I’ve cooked, but it does make it more stressful. I like to start the first step before preparing ingredients for the later ones. So for this stew, I had three minutes of cooking time in which to chop an onion, cube some beef, and find the spices I needed.

-I tend to be intuitive in my cooking. I don’t measure carefully and after I learn a recipe I measure less and less while just throwing in what I feel would be the right amounts. Again, this has surprisingly failed to blow up in my face. Even though I don’t have a ton of experience cooking and don’t understand how flavors work together, I can only remember one or two dishes that turned out badly, and those were more cases of cooking things incorrectly or letting something go too long.

-Truthfully, this matches how I write pretty accurately. Not that I write haphazardly or without proper support, but I do generally start writing and build my papers out from wherever I happen to start. I don’t know how writing has always been my strong point in school.

-Similarly, I have no idea why I’m not a terrible cook.

As for Orange Chicken and Pasta, that is on the docket for tomorrow and I will be sure to pass on any cooking fiascos that prove the above points false.

Good luck to any other fancy food weeks out there!