I Love Cooking…

I am filling out medical school applications this weekend and one of them asks how I have spent my extracurricular time since starting college.  I wrote down: Cooking.  And I told them I spend 15-20 hours a week on average doing it. 

Here, especially, I seem to be thinking about food and cooking constantly.  All day at work, all night at home, all morning.  These days I am working on my egg preparations.  Before this year I could only boil or scramble, now with a good pan I can make a nice omelette or fry up some eggs JDE style.  I am currently working on my poaching techniques which is proving difficult with no extra Rand for vinegar until the next paycheck comes.

Lacking the paycheck thus far pushes me to be creative with my cooking which I actually love to do.  I used to walk into Townhouse 255A and ask them what they had in their cupboards.  Upon receiving answers I would finagle a dinner for all of us!  Those were the days.

Tonight I found myself with plenty of rice, ground beef, and eggs.  Upon some quick kraftfoods searching I decided to whip up some meatballs using the remnants of a strange cheese my roommate bought but didn’t like whatsoever.  Yum.  Please check out this website, once I shared it with Glenda and she was overjoyed, you will be too.  You can plug in up to three ingredients you have on hand and they will put out recipes that use those ingredients.

Some other websites about food I check constantly or am backtracking through:

http://101cookbooks.com/ She reviews recipes as she goes through giving tips and overall thoughts.

SmittenKitchen is a fantastic website but I am going to purposefully direct you to this recipe first… http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/chocolate-peanut-butter-cake/  I hope this will be my next big baking experience.  But I need a paycheck before I can buy sour cream & vinegar and I want to ponder how to substitute for corn syrup which doesn’t exist here.  I am debating between honey or a simple syrup (homemade).  I also don’t have round cake pans here, which means it will not look close to as good as those photos.

http://damngoodfood.blogspot.com This doctor knows good food and has an adventurous palate trying Turkish, Indian, Dutch, etc recipes all the time!

This is not a food blog, it’s an article about a man who foraged for his food for ten weeks.  I found it through 101cookbooks I think and I find it fascinating.  I think about food as much as he does it seems and I’m not even climbing trees to get it: http://www.egullet.org/tdg.cgi?pg=ARTICLE-blandfigs

And finally, I will conclude with a list I  just posted and have now edited in the comments section of my friend & penpal’s blog concerning kitchen utensils/gadgets.

Things I have here in Africa and love:
Decent knife, colander, citrus juicer, cheese slicer, biscuit cutter, cheese grater.  (The last four of which I purposefully brought with me to Africa.)
Things I used to have and miss: Crockpot, big cutting boards, muffin tins, bread pans, brush, rolling pin (I used my Nalgene to roll out pseudo-Cinnamon Rolls today), MagicBullet & Ulu (I still own but it is in the states, thousands of miles from me).
Things I have never had but want:
Ice Cream Maker, Food Processer, Round Cake Pans, Juicer, and last but certainly not least a Kitchen Aid Mixer (it is my goal to get or be given one of these before I get married [if marriage is in the works God]; I don’t want to wait until a husband comes around to get one of the best kitchen tools known to man.  So if you know me and love me maybe ya’ll can chip in…I will be home for Christmas).

So now you know.  I’m kind of obsessed with food.  I even had some quick thoughts this week that maybe I will spend my currently empty January-July in cooking school.  But that wouldn’t be public health/med school related so probably not. 

Now it’s your turn.  Any favorite recipes, food blogs, food photographers?  What kind of kitchen gadgets do you have and love, have and never use, crave to own?  Talk to me.  We’ll act like we have a giant dining room table between us and the candles are still flickering after we’ve filled our bellies on good good food.  Now is the time to talk and share.