The Last Post

So after my last post I had told myself to try and stay interested and focus to make sure that I do my blog each week. That didn't happen and I feel bad but hopefully I can make it up in my presentation tomorrow. I have made a spreadsheet of how I want to go through it and it seems pretty solid right now so that's good, but all in all I really am going to spend some time tonight to try and identify how exactly I have grown and how my project has helped me. I feel unprepared to give this because even though I have been doing the project and did a fairly good job with my blog for at least the beginning of the project it is hard to see the big picture of how I have changed as a person. I have been keeping up with the cooking which is good but not as much as I really should have been. I have been managing to cook 2 or 3 meals per week but due to the repetitive nature of my project I haven't been able to motivate myself further to where I actually blog about it. So that is my situation and hopefully it goes well tomorrow.


PS: I have noticed that I spelled awesome wrong but thats just the way it is.

Week ?

Wow it been a really long time since I have last posted. This is really a combination of things mostly that I have gotten tired of wriing practically the same thing every week and that cooking ingeneral has slowed down. I have still been trying new meal and remaking old ones but the fact that I have found is that after you learn the basics there just isnt much else to do. You can try new meals but you can just as easily eat a new meal. There isnt any new experience or knowledge base coming in a this point and Im starting to lose interest. In reality cooking has become much more of a chore than it has become anything that I would want to continue. Maybe it will change later on in life but right now it is just one moret hing I have to do in a day and I dont look forward to it at all. I planted a garden finally but it is slow and I dont expect to see anything for a few weeks at least.

Week 11

Wow I really kind of dropped the ball last week. I was pretty much having a constant allergy attack all week long and only ended up cooking a few easy meals. I did however get to visit my grandma and she gave me a few gardening tips and I helped her prune her garden and weed it a little. This week was also pretty light in cooking but overall I think I came across some new landmarks and improved

Tuesday- For the first time I tried going for one of the dishes that was under the difficult category and ended up selecting Tiramisu, which actually didn’t turn out being too difficult to make but I just had to be careful and my mom helped me out a little. The recipe was broken down into three sub sections of separate items that need to be made then combined towards the end which is pretty fancy to me. I guess you could say that this was my first multipart meal even though it took under an hour to make. The first step was to make the ladyfingers portion of it. It required 6 eggs, separated, 1/4 cup sugar (2 xs), 1 cup cake flour, and melted butter. First job was to whip the egg yolks and once they started to peak add in ¼ cup of the sugar and then whip them some more until they returned to medium peaks. From previous experience I learned to add the sugar very slowly when whipping or else the whipped eggs won’t rise anymore and you end up just creating a bunch of mush. They directions were very specific about sifting the flour a few times so that it was very light and airy before measuring it out and the funny thing is I remember learning this from the home ec class in Stanley. Then I was to fold the two together and spread the batter into a baking tray. The lady fingers took about 10 minutes to cook and they came out to be a beautiful golden brown but they didn’t taste nearly as good as the ones you buy somewhere else like star bucks. The instructions said that these can be made up to two weeks in advance before making the Tiramisu and some users commented that this actually makes it taste better. I have noticed the same thing in crepes but with crepes you let the batter sit for a few days before making them. Next I was to make the Mascarpone which is cheesy cream that is made from 6 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup Marsala, 1/4 cup brandy, 2 pounds mascarpone cheese. We substituted a few of these because we didn’t have any but I think the same gal was reached. First I whisked together the yolks and the sugar. Then I added the alcohols and placed it over a double boiler on low until it reached a thick paste. It smelled really good surprisingly. The thick paste is called sabayon. In this recipe I had to look a lot of the French words because they were new cooking terms to me. Next I was supposed to cool it over an ice bath but I just stuck it in the freezer and it turned out fine. Once it was room temperature I whipped the cheese into it and it was ready to go. There was also an express syrup portion but I ended up skipping that because I knew my sister wouldn’t like it. Now it was a simple matter of layering the ladyfingers and the Mascarpone Cream until I had a nice looking dessert. I had some in Italy that tasted quite different and used nuts and honey so I think I’ll try to incorporate that next time. My mom made some coffee to go with hers and it was a hit. We also ended up pouring some honey and some chocolate shaving onto the top as suggested by one of the comments.

And this is all I really did this week. It was a new step in cooking as it was a dish consisting of multiple parts buts I really just haven't been in the mood lately because of my allergies.

Week 10

Week 9

Monday- Tonight I made meatloaf for the first time. I have never really been a big fan of meatloaf but I thought I might as well learn how to cook it. The recipe called for a lot of new things for me as I had to add croutons, black pepper, cayenne pepper, chili powder, and thyme. I haven really had to use too many spices so far as normally I stay with the basics (salt, pepper, and garlic salt). It took quite a while to cook which ended up being a little over an hour and for the end result I can’t really see myself making too much meatloaf in the future. For the amount of effort and work that goes into making it I just don’t like it that. I did like that this recipe start me off using more vegetables. I used vegetables in my other cooking but I never put too much effort into preparing them as I always see them as a side but I found it only takes about a minute to put them in the food processor which makes the mixture of them taste really nice. I used onions, carrots, garlic, and red peppers in the food processor and pulsed until the mixture was finely chopped, but not pureed. My parents like it but as I said I have never been a fan of it and the spices were a little too much for my sister so all in all the meal really didn't turn out to be that good.
Tuesday- In order t changes it up from last night’s meatloaf I decided to make dessert tonight and let my mom go ahead and make dinner. I made a custard pie for dessert which tasted pretty good but in my opinion the store bought taste better than mine did. Mine ended up tasting a little too much like egg. The recipe was a pretty simple one and all that really need to be done was to add whipped eggs mixture (eggs, flour, and sugar) to the boiled milk. Afterwards I sprinkled some nutmeg on top and baked it in a premade pie crust. I think I like making dessert more than dinners, it just is more fun because the end result usually taste great and everyone looks forward to eating it.

Week 8

Monday- Alright to night I made my first roast which was pretty nice. I got some beef chuck boneless roast and we had all of the vegetables already at the house. The setup was pretty easy and all I did was cover it in salt, pepper and some olive oil so that it would not stick to the pan. I let it cook for about an hour and when I checked it seemed to be done because the little red thing in the side had popped out. I learned tonight not to trust those because the red timer that comes on it popped out far too early and roast turned out very raw but you couldn't tell from looking at it. So after I cut it up and tasted it I noticed how raw it really was and ended up throwing it in a frying pan for 5 minutes to finish it off. I also learned from this to check your food throughout to make sure that everything is going on track. Once the meat was a little more cooked it tasted fine. I also made some mashed potatoes and come cauliflower with melted cheese which tasted pretty good. Here are the ingredients:

1 First-cut brisket (5 lb)
1/4 Cup(s) Corn oil
8 Onion(s), thickly sliced
6 Carrots, peeled
3 Garlic clove(s), minced
2 Bay leaves
4 Tablespoon(s) Tomato paste
16 Ounce(s) Can tomatoes, with juice
1 Cup(s) Dry red wine

Tuesday- I didn't end up actually cooking tonight but I help my mom. It was nice having someone else make dinner after I have gotten used to cooking it myself. She made some raviolis and cauliflower. I didn't do much but I made the sauce with the blender because it was a pesto sauce. It was a really nice, simple meal and I’ve found that a lot of the simple stuff actually tastes just as good as other things if not it better than.
Thursday-Tonight I made some broil vegetables and some Angel hair pasta with lemon and chicken. While I was waiting for the water to come to a boil I started to prepare the sauce and I had gotten a precooked chicken because those things are amazing and I felt kind of lazy. Next I just melted the butter and added some lemon juice and seasonings until I got it tasting pretty good. Before we sat down to eat, I drizzled the sauce over the chicken and added the noodles on the side. My mom made a salad to go with it and it turned out to be one of the nicest meals so far. So I found a pretty cool website that allows you to organize the recipes so that they appear in order of difficultly along with a number of other filters. I have just now started to search by intermediate meals rather than beginner meals so I guess that that is an improvement. The meals aren't exactly more difficult they just take more time and some knowledge of basic cooking which I now have. Another god thing about the website is that it allows you to change the number of servings and then it changes the ingredients accordingly. Besides giving the recipe it also gives you "related meals" which is nice. Ill posts the link to the site at the bottom of this post but overall its one of the best that I have found. Here are the ingredients:

1/2 Can(s) thyme
1 Bunch(s) minced parsley
326/625 Pound(s) cooked, diced chicken breast
137/4377 Quart(s) lemon juice
2/3 melted margarine
17/29 Pound(s) cooked and drained angel hair pasta
1 Ounce(s) salt
1 Ounce(s) black pepper
1 French bread
1 Package(s) tossed salad

Wednesday-Tonight I was a t my dad’s house so I was just cooking for two. I made something called a taco pie which turned out to be more of a mess than anything but it didn’t taste too bad. The recipe pretty much was just mixing to gather the ingredients into a "pie" and calling it dinner which was ok with me. I thought that it could have been better but it was quick and easy and that was the important part. To add a little to it, because it was rather bland, I added some hot salsa and some sour cream which made it taste a lot better. This is a good recipe to save though because if I ever need to cook for my sister when my mom is out I can use this because it is so plain. This can be added to the famous list of spaghetti or Mac and cheese meals to make for younger children. It called for

• 1 (8 ounce) package refrigerated crescent rolls
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 (1 ounce) package taco seasoning mix
• 1 (16 ounce) container sour cream
• 8 ounces shredded Mexican-style cheese blend
• 1 (14 ounce) bag tortilla chips, crushed

Sunday- Tonight I had my first time to cook for other people. My aunt and her boyfriend came over to dinner so they were able to test out my cooking. I made a few things but the main course revolved around steak, chicken, potatoes and a nice big salad. The steak and chicken were both cooked in a pan because it was raining outside and it just didn’t seem like a barbeque night. The chicken and the steak turned out fine but I used small potatoes which turned out pretty nasty though I think that is because they were rotten. They tasted a lot like strong vinegar and they were bad enough that you had to spit them out. Besides that though everything was a success and all of the food was eaten. That might suggest that next time I make a little more… I guess I’m not used to cooking for more than four people.

As an update to the garden situation, I have dug up the ground but I’m not sure that I am going to plant one. My grandpa came over and told me that because there are so many trees in our backyard there just isn’t a space that would receive enough sunlight.

Week 7

Wednesday- Besides just learning how to cook I have wanted to learn how to cook quickly and healthy. Lately I have been looking up some fast meals that meet just those requirements. There is a fountain of recipes on the internet and it really is great being able to read the reviews on the things that you are making before you get going on to realize that its really not worth it. Plus while reading through the reviews I can pick up on tips that others viewers suggest and can help broaden my knowledge base. Today I choose a recipe called Pan-Grilled Snapper with Orzo Pasta Salad. I cooked the rice without the salt and fat and the fried the fish in a pan for about 8 or 9 minutes then made the sauce following the directions. In total it took about 20 minutes and that included clean up. I like doing these faster meals because even though it is fun to make the more intricate dishes the quick healthy ones are much more practical and these taste just as good.
Thursday-I made bread with one of my uncles for the first time. Bread i alot more complex than I thought it wa and for the amount of work that I put into making it the bread didn't really taste that good but Ill go into the procces that we did. Bob has been making bread for years and he has can make all kinds so he show me a basic one.
Saturday-

Week 6

Well I had some trouble posting last week because Blogger was doing something weird but it’s all working now and I’ll get last week’s blog up soon. This week was a pretty busy week and I got a lot done but unfortunately I wasn't able to do all that I thought I was going to be able to do this weekend. I had planned on setting up a garden but instead I ended up just doing some research on it. While looking online I found a list of a few fast growing vegetables that grow within 6 weeks so I'm going to try and start those up sometime this upcoming week. My mentor also mentioned that a lot of baby vegetables grow very quickly so I'm going to look into those as well.

• Cress
• Lettuce
• Mustard greens
• Oriental greens
• Radish
• Scallions
• Spinach
• Turnip

For cooking not much new happened this week but I'm getting much more comfortable cooking myself meals now and I'm much faster now compared to a few weeks ago.
-Monday I made Raviolis which were very good. They were the premade kind of so all I really had to do was boil them but it still was good. I also made the sauce which wasn't too hard either which was made of 1/2 cup onions; 1/4 cup red wine, 1/4 cup chicken broth, 1 pint grape tomatoes, and 1 clove garlic. It took a little while to cook but tasted really good when it came out but my sister didn't like it too much but everyone else did.
-Tuesday I made a crock pot chicken which tasted delicious. It was probably one of my best tasting meals so far. This is one of the first that recipes that I have gotten online and I really liked it. Ill upload a picture of it though the one I made held the beans because my sister isn't a very big fan. These are the ingredients...

· 4 -5 boneless chicken breasts
· 1 (15 1/2 ounce) can black beans
· 1 (15 ounce) can corn
· 1 (15 ounce) jar salsa, any kind
· 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese

It’s pretty basic stuff but it still tastes really good. This also was the first time that I did a crock pot meal which was a lot easier in my opinion because all you do is plop the chicken down in there and come back in 4 or 5 hours and its ready to go. My mom makes caritas like this all the time and it tastes great so I’ll probably try making some of that up soon. For desert I made crepes. I used to make them with my grandma so I still remember the recipe because we made them so many times. They are pretty simple to make but the only problem is they either taste good or they don't. Some batches for some reason can come out much different than others for better or for worse. I also made some homemade syrup to go along with it but came out tasting far too sugary for me but my sister ended up eating almost all of it.
Thursday- Well tonight I was feeling like Mexican food so I decided to make some enchiladas. I used a recipe online for beef enchiladas which turned out to be, in my opinion, very good. The ingredients were pretty basic stuff and consisted of cheese, olives, and tortillas (of course), cumin, vegetable oil, and some ground beef. There was a recipe to make the sauce that went along with the enchiladas but I didn't use it and went ahead with using some premade stuff. The recipes said to soft fry the tortillas which I had to look up to know how to but that wasn't too hard to do. After that I pretty much added the sauce and vegetables then rolled the mixture into the tortillas. They cooked fairly quickly and overall it only took about 25 minutes for them to finish. I’m now beginning to realize how nice it is to think of something that would sound good to eat and be able to fulfill that request all on your own.

Saturday- I have always like bread and rice pudding and I decided to learn how to make them myself. My grandmother was going to teach me how to make the bread pudding but she wasn’t available so I went with the rice this time. The recipe was pretty basic and there weren’t too many ingredients and I didn’t even have t go to the store t buy and which was nice. I needed:
1Quart(s) Milk
1 Pint(s) Heavy cream
1/2 Teaspoon(s) Salt
1 Vanilla bean
3/4 Cup(s) Long-grained rice
1 Cup(s) Granulated sugar
1 Egg yolk
1 1/2 Cup(s) Whipped cream

The first step was to make an odd concoction out of a combination of the milk, cream, salt, vanilla bean and a 3/4 cup of the sugar. I brought this to a boil and then added the rice. At this point it sort of looked more like a clumpy mess than a pudding (though I guess that just what a pudding look like). Next I added more sugar and egg yolk, after it cooled however, and pour it into serving cups. That was it the recipe barley took anytime to finish and it tasted decent. I wasn't a big of fan as the rice pudding as I had originally thought but I'm still looking forward to trying the bread pudding.

This week I tried a few new things and it went alright. As I have started to cook more things I think that I need to begin to experiment more because the tastes that I’m looking forward to aren’t always there. I keep expecting a dish to taste one way but after using my recipe it taste completely different but that is a part of the experience so everything is still fine

Week 4

Monday-Starting this a little late at night but I still wanted to make sure to write my report. Tonight I made a few things. With the chicken that I cut up last Thursday I barbecued it and and it tasted pretty good. I also cooked up some steak while I was out there and both turned out great the the steak was a little well done. The steak was ridiculously thick though and it swelled even more more when on the grill so I think I did a good job considering. I cooked it outside in the dark and and how important is is to be able to see the food that you are cooking because once I bought it in for the first time it was still super rare. I made mashed potatoes and a cake also. My mom showed me how to properly make mashed potatoes. She told me that adding the raw potatoes into the water before it boils makes them less starchy and I think it worked pretty well.
Wednesday- I have pretty much settled on a schedule for my cooking now. I have decided Monday, Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Tonight I made some pork chops with bread crumbs. Ive gotten a lot better at judging when meat is done now so I have noticed a change of how the meat tastes. This time I got the pork right at the point of a little pinkness and it tasted really good. The breadcrumbs didn't want to stick at first but after a little time spent on that I was able to get a nice coating on them. After that I dribble some lemon juice on it and served it up. The rest of the food was just some steamed vegetables that were leftover from last night.
Friday- Not much happen tonight cooking wise but I did make a few steamed vegetables and some noodles for my sister and me. I out the vegetable in a steaming container that we have that goes into the microwave. I accidentally left it for to long and they were way over done but I guess that is experience.
Sunday- Tonight I learned a lot of new things about new meals. First I started off by making some mushrooms in a frying pan. I always loved the taste of Portabella mushrooms after being cooked in a pan and now I know how to make them. Next I made some artichokes which were a little more complicated than i thought. The artichokes have to be cut in half so that the edible part is more easily accessible. The you have to cut the stock off some and my mom also told me to use some scissors to trim the pricks off of the remaining petals so that I would not stab myself later on. Artichokes have to be steamed so I filled a pot up with about an inch of water and laid the artichokes down on there sides in the water. The pan lid was left a little off so that the steam cook escape. They took about an hour to cook and I had to make sure they didn't stay in to long or else they cook get waterlogged and it ruins it in a way.They did turn out a little water logged but they still tasted fine. Next I made some rice which had to cook for much longer than I thought which was near an hour. My step father told me that it is important no to open the lid when making rice because once all the steam is release it loses its heat and the rice sometimes turns out bad. For the main dish I went outside to use the gas grill which I like much more than the charcoal grill because it is so much easier to handle overall. I cooked up some salmon and some yellow fin tuna which is just Ahi fish. They both cooked really quickly and the Ahi only took about 3 minutes because its usually a sushi but we were cooking it up a little so that the outside looked grilled but the inside had a very distinctive red . I loved the salmon and just garlic salt and some pepper has become my favorite seasoning but Ive never been a big fan of the Ahi even when we get it in Hawaii I have never really liked it so I think Ill stick with salmon and trout.

Week 3

So I've realized that I haven't been doing a very good job in keeping my blog up but next week I going to try my best to stay on top of cooking one meal per day along with following it up right after by writing my daily blog posting. So this last week I was only able to cook a few meals but I think I did a pretty well. On Monday I started off well by preparing lasagna for myself and my family. My mom got me the ingredients and gave a cookbook that I think I'm going to be working out of from now on. It's a Betty Crocker cook book but I like most of the stuff in it so I think it will do. The recipe was pretty straight forward and everything went well until the end because I had different noodles than the recipe called for so I had to improvise. I ended up just sort of throwing everything together and sticking it in the oven. It turned out great for the most part. Around the edges there were a few spots that were dried, but I just cut those pieces off before serving it up. My family complimented me on it which felt a little funny but I guess because it was one of the first meals I had made for dinner they thought they should. I thought it tasted pretty good overall and felt pretty good about not messing it up even after having to make up a few of the directions. I didn't do anything on Tuesday because a sort of family emergency came up. On Wednesday I made stir fry for the first time which was pretty nice. I was really surprised on how easily sir frying can be. Its fun to be able to just sort of throw everything in the pan and it comes out tasting good. I made a vegetable stir fry and through in a few thin slices of steak and I thought they complement each other really well and the whole things taste great. I can’t say if other people thought it tasted good because I liked it so much I ended up eating nearly all of it. Wednesday was a pretty big day and after the stir fry I decided to make a desert which didn’t end up tasting very good. My favorite type of pie is lemon meringue and I thought I would try my hand at that. The pie it itself didn't taste too bad but it was a little too runny and there were far too big of lemon shavings in it. The big problem came when I tried to make the meringue. The recipe calls for the sugar to be added slowly to the egg whites while I was beating them and instead I dumped all of it in at once. The end result was a big lump of sticky goo. So from it I learned to add slowly if you want something to rise up like the meringue and also to watch out for keeping a accurate ratio of liquid and solids so your meal doesn’t come out too runny or too dry. Thursday was the biggest day and my first real learning from another person. My uncle came down from Chico and taught me some basics about butchering. He showed me how to de-bone and butcher a chicken along with lending me a few of his knives which are crazy sharper than any of our knives. I found it pretty easy to cut it up and then I cooked it up.