Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The joy of cooking

My mom gave me the Joy of Cooking for Christmas in 1997, and this is part of what she wrote inside the cookbook: "I hope you find joy in cooking and sharing the products, and I hope you never think of cooking as a requirement."

You see, when we still lived at home, my sister Shannon enjoyed cooking and I did not. But slowly, slowly I have grown fond of the kitchen. No longer satisfied with pasta and store-bought sauce, I have moved onto fancy, healthy dishes - most come from my favorite (vegetarian) cookbook Moosewood Restaurant New Classics, but the Joy of Cooking has proved to be an excellent reference guide - just what my mom planned. I made the not-so-healthy turkey pot pie last night (see scrumptuous photo, below), and my new tentative plan is to follow the cookbook's instructions for roasting a (free range) chicken with all the fixings and making a broth with the bones. Forgive me, vegetarian friends!

4 comments:

Lydia said...

good picture. you don't need anyone to forgive you for your food choices though...bloggy wise, i like how yours is shaping up.

Erin Riley said...

I guess I want them to forgive me for the image of making a broth out of animal bones.

robyn. said...

i concur with lydia on all points...especially the photograph. fab!

surely the vegetarians will appreciate that by using the bones to make a broth, you're not being wasteful? angelique made me and lydia the most delicious chicken soup one time. it had cherry tomatos in it....think about it.

Anonymous said...

Joy of Cooking? If you want to up your readership, how about the Joy of Sex? What happened to the dirty Erin I used to know?

OK, sex next time. For now - cooking. I'm not a vegetarian myself, but I often cook vegetarian dishes. (Mostly because I don't like touching raw meat.) Anyhow, I made chick pea zucchini couscous for dinner tonight and it was as good as it sounds.

...By the way, I was horrified to discover that I had misspelt "zucchini" first time around and had to check it in the dictionary. (And, also had to check "misspelt".)