learn to cook. Really cook.

I baked my first cake and it was delicious!

My adopted father, Fred’s birthday is on Christmas Eve… so I wanted to bake him a festive cake!

I veganized a gingerbread cupcake recipe and used it for the batter, and then I made tart lemon frosting. I made two layers of the cake and put the frosting in between the layers (it looked pretty!) but I ran out of frosting for the top so I sliced up bananas and layered them to make them look pretty and put some sliced oranges in the center. Then I glazed the fruit with agave nectar to make them look shiny and yummy. Just between my mom, Fred, and I… that whole cake was gone within 24 hours! :)

I am now well known for:

gravy (especially delicious on tofurky)
chickpea pot pie
chocolate brownies
soynogg
pasta salad
black bean no-queso quesadillas
spinach lasagna
grilled asparagus
black bean burgers
vegan Portuguese rice pudding

Its nice to have some dishes of your own that “no one makes it like you” and others like it too! I want to find a soup and a sandwich that goes over well. I’m a big fan of sandwiches but I don’t have anything fantastic…

Things I have a hard time with:
chocolate chip cookies (I cant get them to rise enough. they spread and flatten and end up being too hard and crispy)
eggplant (I’m having trouble mastering how to get them to be sweet rather than bitter)
crepes (so difficult to flip! and so easy to burn!)

practice makes perfect! Denise and my parents will be my judges! :)

Now that my family has gotten used to me cooking since I’ve come home for summer vacation, they never cook! I’ve been getting great feedback from my parents and my girlfriend. She gave me the best compliment the other day… that my pasta salad is better than her moms! Wow! :D

I’m starting to run out of new recipes that I’m interested in trying… I want to keep trying new recipes until school starts up! So far I’ve been told that I’m a good cook! Yay!

I’ve been cooking all summer! Most of the recipes I’ve made have turned out good and I can tell that I’m getting better because I”m starting to “wing it” more and the things I’ve done that with have turned out to be delicious! I guess I’m getting better!! I’ve got to get to the point where I feel confident enough to do my vegan barbeque I’m planning for this summer!

I cooked a lot on Saturday and played around with a few recipes. I want to get really good… but I know that a few of the thing I try won’t turn out well along the way. I made carrot soup, which I didn’t like much… but I think it’s because I just don’t like carrot soup. I also made onion soup, which was delicious! It probably wasn’t very nutritious though. I’d like to try to make the spinach soup my mom has made before. It’s my favorite. I’ve successfully baked vegan brownies and apple strudel. The brownies were a hit and apple strudel could have been a little better because I lost count of how many pieces of phyllo dough I was using so I miscounted, haha. I’ve steamed up some asparagus and mushrooms which turned out nicely. And I whipped up some black bean burgers that were absolutely delicious. I can of course make pasta, and I like to fry tempeh in balsamic vinaigrette then stick it in my pasta sauce. A breakfast favorite is banana french toast. I’d like to try some more challenging dishes like vegan lasagna. I’m curious to try tofu scramble, vegetable pot pie, buckwheat pancakes, vegan lasagna, sweet potato soup, tempeh bacon BLTs, Caribbean Beans and Quinoa, Bean and Vegetable Soup… just to name a few. ;)

I’m excited! I still have performance anxiety though. I think I still only feel comfortable cooking for my family. I know they’ll tell me the truth.