Breathing New Life into the Blog

Dear loyal followers. All three of you. Although yes, unnamed follower, perhaps I should check the stats and see if there are more of you lurking out there. And if there are, comment, dag nab it!

As you’ve no doubt noticed, I haven’t been blogging a whole lot lately. Partly because I was mourning the death of my previous blog, and partly because I have been looking at my life a bit differently. For instance, I hardly ever blog about cooking, or recipes. And yet most – if not quite all – of my spare time is spent doing something related to cooking.

I’ve been a baker, or sorts, since I was at least eight. Likely earlier, but that is when I have the clearest memories of inventing recipes, looking at cookbooks, and paying attention to meals I ate elsewhere. The very first curry I ever had was down the street at the Clayton’s house. Not only had I never had curry in any shape or form, I’d never even heard of it. Thank you, Mrs. Clayton, for sending me on a lifelong* journey of deliciousness.

Yes, I should be able to use her first name. Can’t. Discovered the same issue at my high school reunion. Calling a former teacher by their first name? Nope, didn’t happen.

Anyway, back to baking. I’ve become quite good at the baking, good enough to get a job for a while as a pastry chef. I have enough confidence to say “yes, as a matter of fact I do make awesome fudge” and not feel like it’s an empty boast. But I am – or was – an average cook. We ate some fairly interesting things, but as one does with small children we had certain stand-bys that we made over and over again. World Wide Wednesdays** fixed that a bit, but it was still quite simple cooking. So I decided to change that.

To that end, I’ve been trying lots of new things. Watching America’s Test Kitchen (the only show I watch with pen and notebook in hand) led me to a couple of really good AMT cookbook collections, and trying to not buy candy*** led me to my new favourite cooking magazine, Fine Cooking. Seriously, this magazine is so excellent that I bought two of the three annual collected volumes and am about to order the third. I even pre-ordered a special that will be here in September sometime. In some other email I’ll review the magazine with more detailed reasons as to why it’s awesome.

What all of this means for the blog is that starting once a week – Tuesdays, I think – I will review a recipe I’ve tried. Whether it will be something from one of my favourite online Blogs, or from a magazine or something I’ve made up who’s to say? But for better for worse, for yummy or icky, for richer or cheaper I’ll write about it.

Onward and Upward!


Man, lots of notes!

*Yes, it goes on. In fact, reading about curry and Black Cardamom sent me and ultimately a far superior cook – and sleuth – on a successful hunt for the not oft used spice. This would be the same cook – hello Judy! – who introduced me to the concept of sliced bananas as a topping choice for curries. When I worked in the Philippines we quite often had something called Rijsttafel (yes, it’s Dutch but very popular in Indonesian cooking). My table now has a bowl of sliced bananas on it whenever we have curry.

**When the kids were quite small, I got VERY tired of making and eating the same dozen or so dishes. So here’s what I came up with: on a Thursday, one of the three of us would choose a country. On the weekend, I’d make copies of a limited number of dishes from that country (because I’m not an idiot, I knew my limitations!) which I would then give to whoever’s turn it was. They in turn would choose a dish to have the following Wednesday for supper. They also had to come up with some facts or stories about the country of choice. We did this for a number of years and there are some dishes – like The Boys shrimp dish from the time he chose Spain – that are part of the family recipe book now.

We had some truly fun times, both with the cooking (they liked being the evening’s “sous chef”) and in time they’ve both become quite skilled in the kitchen. And they’re pretty fearless eaters, too! They’ll eat things that I won’t, like squid. When The Girl chose Hawaii, I spent $1.49 on a coconut. They were more excited with that than if I'd spent $75.00 on a video game. Never underestimate the thrill a small child can get out of something new and interesting.


*** So, January 7th I started exercising regularly and eating properly. Not in some bid to become some unreal size but because I found myself not able to walk four flights of stairs without my heart pounding like I was going on 107 and wheezing like a badly out of tune squeezebos. So when I was asked to stop on the way home (I was on vacation) to pick up some candy for someone I was sorely tempted to get some for myself. It was Easter and I have a terrible fondness for terrible candy Easter eggs. I decided a cooking magazine or a new mystery novel would be enough of a treat, no harm done to my waistline.



In the end I got the February/March 2010 of Fine Cooking and it was love at first sight. I’ve never before enjoyed – and used with great success – a magazine that made me order the years I’ve missed in a bound edition. A little magic with Amazon and I’m almost caught up.

For those of you that made it through this very long entry thank you. I’ll do my best to make Tuesday’s interesting!