Sunday, May 28, 2006

Returning to a former love

First of all, thank you for the insightful comments and emails. I feel less alone, for sure, and have some great suggestions to consider.

Ok, so I have a hobby that most people don't know about. The reason you don't know about it is because I've stayed away from it for years. The hobby is cooking, and of course I make sure my family is fed, but before depression got its hooks in me, I used to LOVE to cook. But a combination of depression and perfectionism kinda took all the joy out of it for me several years ago.

Well, I've gone through my old cookbooks recently as we were moving back into our kitchen. I got rid of maybe 30 or 40 of them (yeah, I have a big collection) and made sure the best of the best were easy to get to and ready to use. And I've bought a couple of new ones (LOVE amazon.com!) to kind of get my interest aroused.

So this weekend I'm cooking from two books by the same author: The Summer House Cookbook, and The Family Kitchen. The boys are having a sleepover tonight, and I made "Bittersweet Beachside Brownies" for a movie snack. The tomorrow we're having some friends over and here's the menu:

Best-Ever Guacamole
Saratoga Summer Vegetable Salad (a yummy Greek-ish salad)
Citrus-Grilled Chicken Breasts with Mango Salsa
some fabulous bread from Trader Joe's
Ginger Shortcakes with Nectarines and Blueberries

I'm nervous, but happy about risking entertaining. I think I'm a pretty good cook, but cooking is not an exact thing, to be sure. So I'll let you know how the recipes turn out. Oh, and miracle of miracles -- I made brownies and didn't have a single taste. That's astonishing for this girl who once made a bowl of brownie batter and hid it in the fridge (Tim was out of town and the kids were short) and ate the entire thing! No, I did not cook a single brownie. So now you know how amazing today's feat really was, right?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Your food sounds great...much better than my boring chili!

I love to cook too...fancy stuff, fun stuff....but...(1) time is short with so many "short" kids around and (2) my husband could care less if the food is fancy or not. But I do plan to get back into it regardless. He thinks I have waaaayyyy too many cookbooks, but I don't think you can ever have too many *good* ones! (I used to work with a guy who had 400+.....)