Just Another Food Blog

When we first came to China, I didn't know how to cook. I believe I admitted this in an early posting - The Shanghai Kitchen Contest - where I asked for suggestions on fixing dinner with only a stovetop, a wok and a rice cooker. People came through with very few suggestions, but one friend put me in my place. He emailed that I could always just throw some rice, veggies and meat into the wok and create a simple stir-fry. His answer left me flummoxed - which veggies? how to cook the rice? what to do with the meat? I really didn't know how to cook when we came to Shanghai.

And now, after nearly 3 years in this town, I seem to have figured a few things out. Primarily out of necessity, I'll admit. The convenience foods are mighty expensive here, and it is much more cost effective to make your own pasta sauce and pumpkin pie. But the shops just don't hit the right chord here, either. If you want good wheat bread or brownies, you've got to make them yourself. And so I do.

Yesterday, I made homemade chicken nuggets for dinner, and then spent the evening making honey wheat bread from scratch, filling in the rising time with a batch of double chocolate cookies. Today is not so impressive - I ate the double chocolate cookies, and we had strawberries and whipped creme for dinner. The way we live when Dave is away.

Still, I am happy with this progression. Before, I needed a recipe to fix a good dinner. Now, I enjoy a good recipe, but I can also pull dinner together based on what is on the shelves. Before, I couldn't imagine finding the time to bake a loaf of bread. Now, baking bread seems simple and just requires a bit of forethought and a decent memory for time.

I've toyed with adding recipes to this blog, or at least stories about cooking. I toyed with this as I made caramel from scratch last weekend - yum! and beautifully simple. At some point I may, but at this point I'd feel like a hack. Anything truly impressive that I do comes from Simply Recipes or Cooks Illustrated, so anything worth writing and photographing would be a simple copy. Maybe upon arrival in a new land, my cooking stories will be more worth sharing.

The older my girls get, the more I have time for indulging hobbies like cooking and photography. And I'm quite pleased to say that the time is beginning to pay off. Unfortunately, the girls get older and they both talk more and nap less. The disappearance of the nap has led directly to a drop in blog entries. You'll have to bear with me until A: life becomes more interesting again, or B: the talkers spend more than a few hours per week in school. I may not have many stories for show for my time, and I won't soon be adding a food section, but there are some awfully tasty cookies in the kitchen!