Cooking

When Kevin and I got married (16+ years ago), I was a lousy cook. Lousy.  I am not quite sure how I survived 8 years of living on my own.  Did I just eat cereal a lot?  I didn't eat out much, since I was poor.  I do remember cooking corn and slicing up bread for dinner when I was a graduate student.  Oh, I could make chili and spaghetti sauce too.  But my repertoire was very limited.  I think I ate quite a bit of Rice-A-Roni, too.  You get the picture.

When Kevin and I were married, I realized I now had a man in my life who did not want to eat in the (lousy) way I was used to eating.  Fortunately, Kevin is a fine cook.  The first 2 years of our marriage, when both of us were working, Kevin did the cooking and I washed the dishes.  That made us both happy.

When we moved down to Ohio, with Naomi on the way, I got serious about learning to cook. I would say now I am a decent cook, maybe even a good one. Yes, I would say I am good.

But ... I am not ADVENTUROUS.  I tend to cook the same things over and over and over.  That is especially true right now, as I'm feeling super busy with life and don't want to do something new and exciting that might, or might not, turn out.

The last month, Kevin has been home quite a bit what with Christmas vacation, snow days, and illness.  So he's been cooking -- adventurously. He's also getting our big girls involved.  He has purchased one book from America's Test Kitchen, a cooking organization that approaches cooking from a scientific perspective.

I'm keen on our kids learning how to cook well, since I did not cook well until I was about 30 years of age.  That really was ... odd...because my mother is a fantastic cook. It was just something that fell by the wayside while I was growing up. I learned how to clean the house and do laundry and many important skills, but didn't learn how to cook.

Here are some of our exciting meals this month:

Lamb and mushrooms. I think the lamb meal was spurred after Kevin had a wonderful meal of lamb at a Chinese restaurant one evening.  (Lamb at a Chinese restaurant?  Yep, sounds odd, but it was great!)

Apple pastry.  Kevin and Naomi made this together. Oh, it was good. It was exquisite.  It was ambrosia.

This is the apple pastry when it was done.

Apple oven pancake.  A few days ago, Kevin couldn't sleep well because he was feeling so sock so...he got up early and made us this apple pancake recipe.  Also very very good.

I didn't get a picture of the calzones that Kevin and Lydia made together for dinner last weekend. It was also very tasty.

Last, but definitely not least, Naomi superintended individual pizza making with the children.  The older 6 kids each made their own small pizza.  It was a roaring success.