I love food.
Who doesn’t?!
The problem is that I am a typical bachelor who just doesn’t cook. The thing is, I am actually a good cook. I’m just lazy.
I deal with depression, something I am not shy about discussing on this blog. I am in a sort of transitional state of life, yet at times it can feel stagnant. I’ve talked about a few of the challenges I face in the post The Road to Germany: As Times Change. The new job bringing one of the biggest (yet relatively unseen) challenges: my hobby/obsession has become my job. A lot of what I do in my free time revolves around technology, cameras, computers, art, and all things digital media. While I have to do some things to keep myself from burn out and to keep it fresh, I need a hobby completely removed from anything revolving around a camera.
The solution: Cooking.
I enjoy cooking. I need to get back into cooking. I have been told I am a good cook. And I need to improve my cooking skills. It was the obvious choice for a new hobby. It’s also a good way to de-stress. However, I do need to keep it healthy. If I am going to go on this foodventure, I need to get back into my workout routine.
Then on top of that, my kitchen is a complete disaster area. Like I said, I’m a bachelor and I am dealing with depression. My house, mess-wise, is almost as stereotypical bachelor as it gets. Step number one was to debachelorize my house. Starting out that means cleaning the kitchens and cleaning out the fridge. I gagged a few times with the fridge. Some of the stuff has been sitting in there since I first moved in. There wasn’t a lot thankfully, but I needed to clean it out. My kitchen the other hand was buried under dirty dishes. Like I said, bachelor. So I spent most of the day after church cleaning that up. The trick now is to prevent that from happening again. To do that I decided to move almost all of my dishes to the basement, only leaving a few for me to eat off of. If I want to eat, I need to wash the 4 items that I have.
Anyway, onto the food.
To start off, I am making a Cuban-style black beans and rice. I won’t post the recipe this time round. It’s from Cooks Illustrated. Honestly, the idea of blogging this was very last minute. I don’t take pictures of food very often. If I do, it is of my own cooking. But as a result, I only have a few photos. This isn’t going to be completely deprived of digital media, it just isn’t the focus.
I plan on following a few themes to explore a few different styles that I like to cook/eat. Tuesdays are naturally “Taco Tuesday”. You can guess with very little effort in brain power to figure out that this is Mexican food. Thursdays will be a “Taste of Asia”. Once again, pretty on the nose. Same goes for Friday, with the working title of “Pizza Party”, because it’s Friday and I love pizza. Saturday is different. I dubbed it “Test Kitchen”. Saturdays are my day to venture outside the norm. Most of my cookbooks do deal with Asian and Mexican styles, but I do have some general cookbooks and few other specialty books. This also lets me venture a little bit more into side dishes, appetizers, and even desserts.