what's for dinner?

Simply Recipes
my roommate A-- says that i am the slowest cook alive. she says watching me prep a dish is like watching, well, like watching something slow do something even slower.

but i don't care. when i'm in the mood, i don't mind cooking. and i really don't mind it when i have all the ingredients. (cough. word to the wise: if a recipe calls for beef stock, substituting chicken broth and then replacing every other ingredient with a close approximation won't work. just sayin'.)

i especially like cooking things in large batches, mainly because that's how my mom cooked. so - soups, stews, lumpia, pansit (mine is still weird, though), adobo, umba - all of these things can be cooked for a whole bunch of people. i'm much less successful cooking for one other person. (which is why i often fake my dinner parties. it's just fuckin' easier, you know?)

i'm also much less successful picking good recipes; i tend to pick them the way i go grocery shopping. (a typical grocery list: fancy mustard, dark chocolate, pasta, fancy cheese, grands biscuits, kashi, ice cream and doritos. WTF??) i read a recipe and get all caught up in the romance of it without thinking about what this will actually taste like. i guess i pick the recipe for what it signifies rather than its essential qualities.

go figure.

[but thanks to my friend J-- at Delicious Biting]