Cooking

Do you cook every day?  I do.  Breakfast and lunch are generally solo efforts during the week because my husband does his thing and is out of the house before I'm upright.  But I prepare supper every night.  As I mentioned in an earlier blog I tend to prepare meals from scratch and don't use prepared or frozen entrees so I control the fat and sugar content.  The biggest problem I face is that my husband is not home at a predetermined time, it ranges between 8 and 10pm.  I generally wait until 8, and then eat without him because otherwise I'll just nibble junk food.

When you're cooking, do you use a cookbook?  This question arose for me when a close friend sent me an email requesting that I join a recipe chain.  All I had to do was write down 1 recipe and send it to two different people, eventually I would receive about 30 recipes in return.  I was supposed to send recipes that I cook all the time, but unfortunately I don't actually use recipes very often.  I love to read cookbooks and imagine how the ingredients will taste.  I have a respectable collection of cookbooks, and also spend time on line, checking out recipes on websites.  But after over 30 years of cooking suppers my repertoire has become fairly predictable.  Instead of measuring, I use a "splash of this" or a "dash of that" or "the rest of something before it goes bad".  Very difficult to explain in an email recipe.

The list of ingredients I use depends on what is in season and what is on hand.  I cook a lot of main meals that can be prepared in one pot because I hate a dirty kitchen, and most things are going to sit and wait to be eaten.  Thus we eat pasta with red sauce and ground beef (or pork, or chicken).  Chili is always a good stand by because I use minimal meat and at least 4 cans of beans plus whatever vegetables are on hand.   Since we rarely eat breakfast together, bacon or sausages and eggs are a dinnertime treat. 


One series of  contemporary cookbooks that I really enjoy reading are more like a travel book with recipes than a simple cookbook.  They are written by a husband and wife team whose names are Naomi Duguid and Jeffery Alford.  They have travelled throughout the Asian continent since 1985, individually, as a couple, and with young children.  Naomi takes incredible photographs of the people, places and food.  They provide clear recipes that can be duplicated in a Canadian kitchen.   I first read "Seductions of Rice" which was an exploration of the global uses of rice.  Before reading it, I only used long grain converted rice.  Now my pantry includes red, black, jasmine and basmati brown rice.  "Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet" explores the cuisines of the Mekong delta, including Southern China, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and southern Vietnam.  Many of the staples mentioned in this cookbook aren't available where I live, however Duguid and Alford have access to far more exotic ingredients living in Toronto.  They have written a total of four cookbooks, all of which have been prize winning, and if you enjoy travelling and cooking they are a wonderful way to spend a snowy January day.