My family was the exact opposite. My mom can cook, but she has a clearly defined wheelhouse. My dad, on the other hand, taught me that cooking is a labor of love, and consequently I love to cook. This has helped me in my current relationship.

(March 23, 2014 at 7:34 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: My family was the exact opposite. My mom can cook, but she has a clearly defined wheelhouse. My dad, on the other hand, taught me that cooking is a labor of love, and consequently I love to cook. This has helped me in my current relationship.

I grew up in a similar situation. My dad not only can cook because he has previously worked in restaurants as a cook, but loves it more than I think I can describe, like he is constantly thinking of things related to cooking. Not surprisingly, I have never had a problem with my dad's cooking (although some of the things he has chosen to cook just aren't for me, especially because he LOVES meat and I am a vegetarian).

My dad's cooking made the decision to become vegetarian hard for me, because yeah, some meat totally tastes awesome, at least the way he cooks it. I just decided that to me, the relevant moral issues with it were just way too important for me and that it would be reasonably easy for me to make the change and that I was just too damn mature now to possibly justify eating meat any longer. I guess that means I saw it as like, a part of my becoming an adult.

The irony is that I am grilling steaks as we speak (type.) I identify with the moral issues regarding meat. But I love it too much. I am going to eat a big steak, some asparagus, a baked potato, and a cucumber/tomato salad in about 20 minutes, and that steak is going to make me smile from ear to ear. And the Cab that I brought to go with it.

Futile and SC, do you have dishes that you particularly enjoy cooking? I will say, I'm a great baker. Baking is fun for some reason to me, over cooking. But preparing dinners and such, I think what it is, is I lack that creative flare for it.

If I'm invited to a dinner party and asked to bring something, I will take the time to create an interesting dish. Maybe I need an audience.

Hmm.... my faves.. My Chicken Marsala is fantastic. And I make a crawfish etouffee that will make you swoon.

Awesome! Chicken Marsala, I always mess up. You should post the recipe.

(March 23, 2014 at 7:51 pm)Deidre32 Wrote: Futile and SC, do you have dishes that you particularly enjoy cooking? I will say, I'm a great baker. Baking is fun for some reason to me, over cooking. But preparing dinners and such, I think what it is, is I lack that creative flare for it.

If I'm invited to a dinner party and asked to bring something, I will take the time to create an interesting dish. Maybe I need an audience.

I particularly enjoy cooking whatever it is that someone I care about really likes, and being successful at it.

And of course, the things that I personally like to eat, like tofu fried rice. I have spent years modifying what I do when I make tofu fried rice, and the way I do it now, the tofu tastes just like chicken and the entire dish tastes spicy and peanuty and delicious, like thai fried rice. But I'm probably not using the actual spices I would use if I set out to make "thai fried rice."

I absolutely must start from an actual recipe, but because of my ADHD and the way life is what actually happens is never exactly what the recipe said to do, and I just love when my guesses at things like what to substitute when I find I am missing an ingredient actually work out, and the results are better than I imagined they could be.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I feel like my culinary instincts are usually pretty good.

And by the way, when I say I cook, I do not in any way mean that I make any elaborate dishes that take more than half an hour to prepare. I'm fine if it involves baking and it bakes for a long fucking time. But I feel like I know what I am actually capable of, and I definitely know what I am willing to do, and like, all that fancy shit? THAT AIN'T IT.

Brokenquill, I just placed a meme at the bottom of this post. It is a picture of a black woman saying with great fervor in an overexcited kind of stereotypically ghetto way, "AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!" and those are the words that are on the picture. This is from a popular Youtube video, but you really don't need to see that whole video for this meme to be hilarious. It may be funny due to racial stereotypes, but the reasons why I find it funny are that she said something so completely true and that there are so many things that it would be appropriate to use this meme for.

(March 23, 2014 at 8:20 pm)futilethewinds Wrote:

(March 23, 2014 at 7:51 pm)Deidre32 Wrote: Futile and SC, do you have dishes that you particularly enjoy cooking? I will say, I'm a great baker. Baking is fun for some reason to me, over cooking. But preparing dinners and such, I think what it is, is I lack that creative flare for it.

If I'm invited to a dinner party and asked to bring something, I will take the time to create an interesting dish. Maybe I need an audience.

I particularly enjoy cooking whatever it is that someone I care about really likes, and being successful at it.

And of course, the things that I personally like to eat, like tofu fried rice. I have spent years modifying what I do when I make tofu fried rice, and the way I do it now, the tofu tastes just like chicken and the entire dish tastes spicy and peanuty and delicious, like thai fried rice. But I'm probably not using the actual spices I would use if I set out to make "thai fried rice."

I absolutely must start from an actual recipe, but because of my ADHD and the way life is what actually happens is never exactly what the recipe said to do, and I just love when my guesses at things like what to substitute when I find I am missing an ingredient actually work out, and the results are better than I imagined they could be.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I feel like my culinary instincts are usually pretty good.

And by the way, when I say I cook, I do not in any way mean that I make any elaborate dishes that take more than half an hour to prepare. I'm fine if it involves baking and it bakes for a long fucking time. But I feel like I know what I am actually capable of, and I definitely know what I am willing to do, and like, all that fancy shit? THAT AIN'T IT.

Brokenquill, I just placed a meme at the bottom of this post. It is a picture of a black woman saying with great fervor in an overexcited kind of stereotypically ghetto way, "AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!" and those are the words that are on the picture. This is from a popular Youtube video, but you really don't need to see that whole video for this meme to be hilarious. It may be funny due to racial stereotypes, but the reasons why I find it funny are that she said something so completely true and that there are so many things that it would be appropriate to use this meme for.

*hugs* I've seen the video giggles

Green . . .

. . . with ham.

(March 23, 2014 at 8:14 pm)Deidre32 Wrote: Awesome! Chicken Marsala, I always mess up. You should post the recipe.

No secret. I use Carrabbas' recipe, except I make the sauce from a roux, not a reduction. It's all about the marsala wine. You need to get dry marsala from a wine shop, not the grocery store. Rule of thumb: if you wouldn't drink it, don't cook with it.