Plato's Footnotes

I think I used practically every pot or pan we own tonight for the dinner I cooked. Regrets? Not a one; I had a blast. I made naan (from scratch!) and potato curry and dhaal [lentil] curry. In reality, these dishes aren’t that complicated. Naan was mostly a bread, and so just required dirtying some bowls and flat surfaces. Both potato curry and dhaal curry had the same basic ingredients, except for their main ingredient: onions, garlic, curry power, tumeric, and coconut milk. I did have to skin and boil the potatoes, but that was only one more pot. I suppose I made rice as well…

Anyway, the point is that a number of dishes were already dirty before I started and I made a lot more dishes dirty but it was all worth it. The food turned out really well (though with definite room for improvement). I’m mostly reveling in this cooking fiesta because one of my greatest [domestic] fears is that I’ll always take the easy way out when it comes to what I eat.

Not only do I want to eat healthily, but I also want to eat interestingly. I want others to enjoy my cooking and I want it to be a way for me to share some creativity with others. I went to the grocery store for the first time on foot today, and I had to walk quickly through the frozen pizza aisle not to tempt myself. Frozen pizza isn’t tempting because it’s tasty or even cheap, it’s just easy. I can unwrap one quickly, throw some spices and extra cheese on it to make it taste better, and go back to whatever I was doing. As it is, I came back from the grocery store tonight at 5 and didn’t leave the kitchen until 7:30, and that was before any of the dishes got done (which my wonderful roommates did most of). But the cooking process was a group effort and the eating process was equally communal. And it was fun.

Now I’ve got leftovers for at least two meals and a dish I am comfortable making. I’ll probably pick something with fewer steps next week (my roommates and I are each cooking one night a week for the whole apartment), but I’m really glad with what I produced.

Just wanted to share.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 at 8:02 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.