Fiesta!

There are a few things I'm good at in life: cooking and rallying people.

Today marked the culmination of two of those life skills. The slideshow below documents the first potluck at my office. I took on the protein (chipotle-marinated chicken) and my co-workers brought the fixins.

Naturally, the fiesta led to a siesta.

The Bright Lights of Imagined Fame

Hello old friends and spam bots overseas. I apologize for not writing more recently.

Here are my excuses:

1. Twitter takes more time than I thought.
2. I've replaced writing with going to the gym.
3. Due to massive muscle gain and my downsizing to children's clothing, I've lost circulation to my extremities thusly preventing my posting of new quips on here.

That Elusive Secret Ingredient

I'm going to tell you the secret to great, mind-blowing food. Can you keep a secret? And by keep a secret I mean promise to forward this to everyone you know and thereby drive up the traffic to this site resulting in a fat check of four cents to be auto-deposited to my Swiss bank account from AdWords.

Studies show--I'm sure they exist, if I had an assistant as God intended me to, they would have included a link to a study which would go right here--that it doesn't matter if you follow a recipe exactly or simply heat up a pre-made meal. There is an underlying secret step to phenomenal food:

Have someone else cook the food for you.

Simple as that. It makes EVERY recipe better. Why do you think they put "Serves 3-4 people" at the top of the recipe? Surprisingly, no one on my beloved Food Network or Cooking channel has shared this tip with you. As someone who loves to cook, my culinary creations always seem to taste better to those sharing in the meal than to me. Similarly, my mom's food will always taste better than what I make.

I challenge you and your taste buds to the following showdown.

We (or you and a friend, if you have one) both cook the exact same dish in the exact same kitchen. I would advise the dishes be prepared on different days to remove the process of cooking, which could skew the results. There's something about someone else making you food. Try it with different dishes: cans of soup, sandwiches, pastas, baked chicken, brussels sprouts. Well, maybe not that last one.

Psychologically (see non-existent paper above), knowing that someone cared enough about you to make you something to eat heightens the sensitivity of our taste buds, as long as they aren't trying to poison you. Note: make sure your cooking partner for the challenge doesn't secretly or openly want you dead. In this case your dish may just taste a little different than the one you cook for them. That taste is cyanide or arsenic. You should be calling 911 right now. You are in no condition to drive. Stop questioning the smirk on your former friend's face. GO!

Even that hospital Jell-o tastes better than if you had made it, doesn't it?

Pleasant eating!

Regrets from an Occasional Blogger

I wonder if Jesus would have been a blogger. If so, would he have a lot of followers? Would he comment on his disciples' musings?

There are two types of people in this world: those that comment on blog posts and those that don't.

I regretfully am in the latter bucket. It isn't that I don't want to read what others write, I simply haven't allocated the time to do so. I think it all started that fateful day when I subscribed to a few magazines, one of which being a weekly. One of the subscriptions has since run its course and I didn't renew. There are still four or five issues in their snug cellophane. That leaves two dense mags that skimp on pictures and continue to make me reach for the dictionary. I've yet to determine if this makes me feel challenged or deserving of the short bus. My goal is to be reading issues in the same month as my Legends of Jazz wall calendar displays. It's an ongoing literacy battle. I took out a speed reading book, but apparently getting the audiobook version was a wasted effort.

2 Takes on Pork Chops for Quick Eats after Work

Feeling the need to cook more at home, I tried two takes on pork chops the past two nights. Both recipes are quick solutions to make a decently healthy dinner after work.

Round 1: Pork chops with mushrooms, red onion, broccoli and garlic.
Time: 30-40 minutes.

Cookin' With Cougars

For the record, I do my own laundry. It's best I start the story there.

I knew what I signed up for when registering for a cooking class in the city. Intended to facilitate new connections among Chicagoans, the gourmet cooking party attracted about 20 people into a room outfitted with gourmet kitchen equipment on the lower level of the Belden-Stratford hotel in Lincoln Park. The crowd was markedly divided. Most of the men were in their late-20s and the women easily in their mid-30s. While I was watching Saved by the Bell after school, these women were unwinding after work with episodes of Murphy Brown.