So moving out has meant cooking my own dinners and such. Which I find fun (most of the time). What I find interesting when I search the net for new recipes/ideas is the amount of ingredients needed in some of them. So because I'm lazy and often don't have the pinch of turmeric or cup of saffron handy, I tend to remove those "extras" and end up with a "simple dish". I think it's a good and bad thing. The good thing being that the dish is kept simple. The bad thing being there could be all those extra possible flavours that I'm missing out on.
Awhile back I bought a book called "Five Ingredient Fix" by some celebrity chef (who I've never heard of but is popular on some channel in the UK). The philosophy in the book is, to not use more than 5 ingredients in any dish, because the flavours of the ingredients should speak for themselves (salt and pepper aren't added as ingredients because some people like salt or pepper and it's to their own personal tastes). In a way, I kinda followed that philosophy. I haven't really followed any recipes in it yet, but she has some interesting ideas in it.
For example, my easiest, almost foolproof recipe, is chicken and corn soup. Chicken breast+creamed corn+stock+eggs+cornflour, salt and pepper to taste. According to my boyfriend, this is the best chicken and corn soup he's ever had, and he refuses to order it at Asian restaurants now because mine's too good. He might be a bit biased but *I* think it's rather good too. So after this simplistic starter of a recipe, you can add anything to it I guess. There was a recipe with bacon, noodles... but I don't know. I think it might ruin a good thing to add anything else to what is already a good dish.
What I'm doing lately is eating more completely vegetarian meals. My Indian friend sometimes made me vegetarian lunches when I was still working at Subway. She used turmeric in her dishes and the spice really reminded me of my mum's cooking. She later tells me that she saw a cooking show which says that Vietnamese and Indian people like to use turmeric in their dishes
So I guess that's what started it all. I got a liking for chickpeas and tofu. I recently made this:
a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto… which is homemade tempura vegetables with tofu on rice. Not sure if I'll go ALL vego because I still like my meat
But it's good to expand my dietary horizons.
Still talking about food, moving out with my boyfriends also means I'm cooking for two, so I can't make things that he won't eat. Which isssss. All seafood, beef, lamb or pork (the minced kind is okay) and anything too weird, out there or well, asian. Which is okay, I get my share of squid, prawns, steak, lamb etc. when we occasionally eat out or am at my parents (or his). So my cooking creativity is a bit limited sometimes. All in all, I like cooking
I wouldn't make a great chef (I wouldn't be able to handle the pressure) but the meals I make at home are tasty, and that's what counts.
Moving on to old art.
I looked through the entirety of my gallery today (including my scraps). I have a lot of art in there, some that I'm a little proud of, others not so much. But here comes the question. Is it better to have a gallery full of your art which shows progress, thought, improvement... Or is it better to have a refined, good quality gallery to show off. Whenever I'm browsing devianArt and come across an artist whose most recent is really cool and later works not so much, I still take the time to browse the entire gallery (unless it's 20 pages long). I don't favourite or comment on the older pieces, but I like seeing their progress as an artist. Then there are those galleries that just are full of just REALLY good art and it makes me wonder if they were really that good when they joined, or they just siphoned out their mediocre art.
My
Till next time,