mr. tran has food for thought
ever since my sister moved out of our house, i've picked up some of her duties and have been cooking more...my brothers both work and come home relatively late so i have to make dinner pretty much every night...as a person who didn't really cook before, i wasn't too worried...over my lifetime, i've watched hundreds and hundreds of hours of cooking shows (my tv tastes are varied)...but having never applied anything i learned in a real kitchen, those hours didn't result in any development of actual cooking skills...however i think they helped me develop a good cooking common sense...so given a recipe and ingredients, i think i could make pretty much anything without screwing things up (too badly)...after hearing about what i cook, my sister now complains about how i never made anything when she lived with us...
i think the surprising thing for my siblings is that i don't half ass the cooking...back when i lived at the lake house, i cooked the same things over and over again and it most likely came out of a box or can...since i was just cooking for myself, i didn't care...but now that i'm cooking for other people, i put in more effort...i also try to cook a variety of things and figure out new ways to use whatever we have on hand...like we usually have ground beef or turkey in our freezer so i've used it to make stuff like taco filling, meatloaf, meatballs, texas straw hat, etc...the other challenge is trying to use up food that we have in excess and/or will spoil soon...for example, we had a lot of strawberries once so i made a strawberry pie, i made zucchini bread when we had too much zucchini, and this weekend i made peanut butter cookies (pictured below) because we had three jars with varying levels of peanut butter...
since i usually only make a dish once, i thought i should try to take pictures of the more interesting food since i may never make it again...unfortunately, i only thought of this recently so there's no picture of that pretty strawberry pie i mentioned or this awesome cola glazed baked ham i made...despite deciding to take pictures, i tend to forget to do it in general since i'm usually hungry by the time i'm done cooking and dive right into the food...or my brothers are already home and i don't want to look like a weirdo who takes pictures of his food...so no proof of the pineapple pork ribs i made yesterday sadly...
i did take pictures of the creme caramel, aka flan, i made last week...we had a surplus of eggs and the first thing i thought of was to make flan...having never made it before, i think it turned out well...after taking it out of the oven and letting it cool, i ran a knife around the edge of the ramekin, put a plate on top of it and flipped it over...then i crossed my fingers, gave the ramekin a shake and watched as the flan slipped out with the caramel sauce cascading over it...it was just like how they do it on tv...i'll definitely make it again in the future...my brothers aren't big fans of custardy desserts though...oh well...more for me...
i think the surprising thing for my siblings is that i don't half ass the cooking...back when i lived at the lake house, i cooked the same things over and over again and it most likely came out of a box or can...since i was just cooking for myself, i didn't care...but now that i'm cooking for other people, i put in more effort...i also try to cook a variety of things and figure out new ways to use whatever we have on hand...like we usually have ground beef or turkey in our freezer so i've used it to make stuff like taco filling, meatloaf, meatballs, texas straw hat, etc...the other challenge is trying to use up food that we have in excess and/or will spoil soon...for example, we had a lot of strawberries once so i made a strawberry pie, i made zucchini bread when we had too much zucchini, and this weekend i made peanut butter cookies (pictured below) because we had three jars with varying levels of peanut butter...
since i usually only make a dish once, i thought i should try to take pictures of the more interesting food since i may never make it again...unfortunately, i only thought of this recently so there's no picture of that pretty strawberry pie i mentioned or this awesome cola glazed baked ham i made...despite deciding to take pictures, i tend to forget to do it in general since i'm usually hungry by the time i'm done cooking and dive right into the food...or my brothers are already home and i don't want to look like a weirdo who takes pictures of his food...so no proof of the pineapple pork ribs i made yesterday sadly...
i did take pictures of the creme caramel, aka flan, i made last week...we had a surplus of eggs and the first thing i thought of was to make flan...having never made it before, i think it turned out well...after taking it out of the oven and letting it cool, i ran a knife around the edge of the ramekin, put a plate on top of it and flipped it over...then i crossed my fingers, gave the ramekin a shake and watched as the flan slipped out with the caramel sauce cascading over it...it was just like how they do it on tv...i'll definitely make it again in the future...my brothers aren't big fans of custardy desserts though...oh well...more for me...