Cooking

I love cooking.

I realized more and more just how awesome cooking is. Well, more than that, I realized how much I really really like cooking. Then, of course I started to think about making a career out of it, and I decided there's no way I want to make a career out of cooking.

But I would like to devote this entry to the awesome-ness of cooking and why I like it.

1. No rules, just guidelines. Unlike a lot of the world and society, I can break all the rules if I want to. I don't have to follow the recipe to the T and it usually still comes out okay. I try to use some kind of logic but the cool thing is, it doesn't matter if I'm a little off or if I add a little extra salt or basil because usually it doesn't ruin the recipe (though honestly, I feel like if you add too much cinnamon or any strong herb, it kills it - I tried to make rosemary lemon chicken once and completely failed because I didn't know how much rosemary to add - I didn't use a recipe that time though.) Basically, the beauty about cooking is that there's a lot of room for creativity, but there are boundaries (with the help of recipes) so that you won't completely screw up. If I want to make something I like, I usually look up several recipes for the same thing and see where the recipes differ - what ingredients are the same, how much is required, etc. Since they usually differ a little, I can start to see where I have the freedom to mess around and make it my own.

2. No pressure. I'm not cooking for anyone but myself. If I screw up, I'm the only one who has to deal with the consequences (and eat the nasty thing - thankfully that rosemary lemon chicken was really the only utter failure. The stuff I make usually isn't terrible. Oh, I made this awesome smelling chicken vegetable stew that turned out pretty bland but even that with a little hot sauce was okay. :P)

3. Relaxing, yet productive. I can de-stress and not feel like I'm wasting my day away (which is how I feel when I play Tetris Battle for like an hour). I can spend hours in the kitchen and be completely at ease about it - I know some people hate being in the kitchen for long periods of time but I find the kitchen to be an agreeable place for me.

I realized how much I like cooking here because it's actually incredibly inconvenient to cook since I'm at a hotel and at the center the cooking situation is not ideal.

Basically, all I have is a skillet-type thing and a pot-type thing (it's not very deep either so making pasta was a little tricky). I don't have a spatula and I have to take all my dishes downstairs if I want to do the dishes. I also have take all my vegetables and fruit downstairs to wash them. Or I use a big water bottle and a bowl as a makeshift sink. Oh, but the microwave is a grill/oven/microwave all in one. It's kind of cool (I made toast using it!). So yeah. I like cooking. ^_^

I mean I took some pictures (below) and none of it looks very good and in terms of taste, it's usually a "meh! not bad" instead of  a "wow, this is really good, I'm going to make this again!" but it doesn't change the fact that I like cooking.

(and of course I'll only choose the pictures that actually make my cooking look half decent - hehe!)

^ so above is a spinach omelette I made. without a spatula (that's why it's all broken and what not!). Anyway, it came out pretty decent! Spinach is too troublesome to wash though. Oh and if you look closely, I cooked the eggs for too long. I'm still trying to get that down.

^ I fried some veggies (with oil, salt, pepper, basil, a little sugar and tabasco) and then they had something called hamburg steak and I think they already added some kind of sauce or something (Worcestershire sauce?) so the meat itself was really soft and flavorful. I added salt, pepper, olive oil and as can be seen (slightly burnt ^^;;) onions and garlic. I forgot how much oil comes out of meat... I added butter to the pan before I cooked the patties so they were swimming in oil. -_- It came out pretty decent though! :)