When you participate in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project, you get lots of vegetables. Mucho mucho. Some with names you have never heard of, e.g., verdolaga. The CSA process demands creativity. My husband, for example, made a pesto from garlic scapes*, the stem-leafy part of garlic.

I had the following CSA loot to work with: cabbage, carrots, celery, scallions, red onion, wilted green leafy things,* and soon-to-wilt cilantro. I also had leftover salsa. A quick scan of the refrigerator shelves revealed a jar of artichoke bruschetta. I decided: why not combine the joys of salsa & slaw, and ooo-la-la it with artichoke dressing?

Traditionally, a slaw consists of lots of cabbage and some carrots. I used a peeler to peel the entire carrot into slivers. The cabbage I sliced super fine, perhaps a millimeter in depth, but the length was long, possibly six inches. I added the pre-made salsa (onions, peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, and jalapeno -- also diced). On the theory that you can't have too much cilantro, I chopped up more. I used one teaspoon of the artichoke bruschetta along with a splash of olive oil to dress it all. And of course, I added more salt. I love salt as much as life itself.

I was tempted to add a sliced plum, but it's akin to coaching a monkey to ride a bicycle on a tightrope --- adding one more thing will send the whole thing crashing. And I have to eat my mistakes, unlike those celebrity chefs on TV.

I scooped up my slaw with Garden of Eatin Blue Chips, which I prefer because they contain 2 g fiber per serving. So I can justify chips and salsa as a nutritional supplement.

*Garlic Scapes

**The leafy things wilted because I didn't know what to do. I threw those into a vegetable broth project, together with onions, celery, and carrots.

OMG: Sheep's milk camembert

My mother's a big fan of sheep's milk cheese. She once transported a duffel bag full of cheese across thousands of miles by land and by air. I didn't know what she was up to until the day after we'd landed in New York. I opened our refrigerator and founds a shelf full of cheese with Portuguese labels or no label at all. I'm reminded of that episode of I Love Lucy where Lucille Ball attempts to smuggle an obscene amount of cheese from Italy by pretending a slab of cheese is a swaddled baby. [Season 5: Episode 26]

I'm embarking on a cheesescapade. I plan to taste each of the varieties of cheese listed by Fresh Direct, an online grocer. And, it's been marvelous. My latest discovery is the buttery heaven that is sheep's milk camembert. Here's the strange thing: I have recent memories of turning up my nose at camembert. It was tooo strong. And that smell. Something was rotting and why on earth would I want to put that rot in my mouth?

But now the white mold that forms the ripe rind of the cheese doesn't bother me. I use to cut it off as though it had cooties. Now it's part of the cheese's charm. Perhaps, I'm finally growing up. That is, before I had immature taste buds, and therefore I liked the bland. Now, I'm judging cheese on it's own terms. Yes, it's moldy milk. But there are ways to cultivate mold that bring out the greatest flavors.

"You can't get this cheese here," my mother explained when we questioned her about the alleged craziness of her heist. Pasteurization kills the flavors. The best cheeses are local, as is the cheese that caught my fancy. It's made by Old Chatham Sheepherding Company of Hudson Valley. Spread it in some toast. It's like butter. Literally.

Eat Like a Gorilla

That's right. Eat like a Gorilla. As part of my quest to eat as many kinds of cheeses as possible this year, I'm diligently cutting non-cheese calories. But smaller portions are not my style. I like food, and lots of it. So I've decided to eat like a gorilla. Serve myself with a trough.

The catch: I gotta fill that trough with fruits, vegetable, and other high-fiber foods. Gorillas get to EAT ALL DAY. And so can you, if you eat the high-fiber way. I'm lucky. My job has an excellent salad bar, complete with lightly marinated grilled vegetables. I simply ask for ALL the available items (except meat). Unlike the proverbial gorilla, I add both feta and goat cheese to my salad. OMG, the saltiness! Such briny beauty. I used to eat Athenos feta, but now that I've tried real creamy, salty fresh feta, I can never go back. Never.

I also add fruit to my green salads. Like grilled nectarines. And all kinds of berries: blue-, black-, straw- and raspberries. So yummy.

Because the ingredients are super-fresh, I don't need to add much dressing. I used to plop on tablespoons of an lemon-Italian House dressing, but I found that my salads actually tasted better when I added just a tablespoon or two of balsamic vinaigrette.

Basic rule of thumb: the fresher the food, the less work it takes to prepare yummy meals, and the less fat needs to be added.

With less dressing, you actually taste the crispness of the lettuce, and benefit from the bite of the vegetables. The individual flavors hold sway, whereas when you over-dress, it all blends into a fatty mush.

Don't dull your salads by coating your taste buds with too much oily dressing. I'm loathe to repeat the cliche, but alas, it's apt: less is more.

The Holy Cheese Plate

I'm embarking on a quest. Try all cheeses made available by Fresh Direct, the online grocery shopping site. They have lots: probably literally so.

Fresh Direct organizes cheeses into the following categories: New & Noteworthy, Cheddars & Jacks; Brie & Friends; Chevres & Goats; Swiss & Alpine; Blues; Fetas; Fresh & Soft; Firm; Mozzarellas; Parmesan & Grating; Light & Soy; Goudas; Stinky; Sheeps; and Semi-Soft.

First, I will try all the cheeses that are meltable or spreadable to use as condiments for spectacular sandwiches. Then I will experiment with all cheeses recommended by readers and friends. Let me know what your favorite cheese is, and I'll blog about it.

Then, I'll move onto the exotic, i.e., out of the ordinary cheeses. Then, onto cheeses that I don't remember tasting, but might have tasted, in order to give them a second chance. Then all the rest. I am, however, not looking forward to Soy & Light (even more fear-inspiring than stinky cheese). But, onward ho. All cheese must I try!

After I've tried at least one version of each kind of cheese, I'll try variations, i.e., a second variety of feta.

Cheese Pleases

I faced a dilemma. Should I write about healthy eating or the magic of melted cheese? Background: I'm doing the president's challenge fitness program, which includes eight healthy eating goals. One goal, which I'm struggling with this week, is "I chose fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk, yogurt, or cheese." I'm into week four of the program, which I'll discuss in greater detail in another post. For now, see: https://www.presidentschallenge.org

"Fat-free cheese." Oh please. And low-fat cheese is not the answer either. Portion control (another presidential eating goal) will be important. But it's not enough. One of the requirements of the president's challenge is 30 minutes of daily exercise. Unfortunately, whenever I embark on a major exercise program, my appetite explodes. Sometimes I'm so hungry, particularly at night, I need more food than your average diet would allow. I need volume AND I need fat. Fat fills your belly and triggers that "I'm sated" sensation that tells us to stop eating.

So, I'm giving up beef for the time being in order to free up fat calories for cheese, and to preserve my right to super-size a few items. And I'm trying to get more of my protein calories from beans, fish, and low-fat milk and yogurt (2%). I'm not giving up beef forever. Perish that thought. I like vegetarian food, but sometimes you NEED a hamburger. No, I'm merely shaking things up.

I'll drink 1% milk, but never skim. And seriously is 2% fat dairy such a big deal? Two percent is still much less than the fat percentage of your standard cut of beef, right? Healthy eating is important, but pleasure is a worthy goal that merits daily attention, i.e., pleasure in non-negotiable.

So I do the math. Two percent Greek yogurt has 170 calories per cup, of which 40 comes from fat. So 2% translates into 24% of calories from fat. One percent milk has 100 calories, of which 20 are fat. So 1% = 20% of calories from fat. Yikes, that's some unexpected math. But still, it's only 20-40 calories. Let the fat remain.

Next post: Doing the Math for Cheese.

Necessary tools: Sandwich Press

I recently bought a grill/sandwich press, and I don't know how I survived four decades without one. Ordinarily, I would say simplify, simplify your kitchen. Give away your gadgets and sweep out specialized equipment. But "necessary" tools save time. To become "necessary," an object must be used almost daily.

The beauty of the sandwich press is that it converts what would have been limp leftovers into gourmet food.

Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, is also a fan of the sandwich press, and uses it to make signature sarnis.

A few days ago, I used the grill to quickly cook boneless spare ribs. The following day, I thinly sliced the pork and layered it with ham and cheese to make a freshly pressed Cuban. For another day, I used the Cuisinart to make pancakes, bacon, and eggs for a "breakfast for dinner" meal.

Fresh & Fridge Salad

The Job: Make the freshest salad possible without leaving the apartment.

The Mark: Yummy, sweet yellow peppers from Whole Foods - The vegetable was just sitting there in the crisper, almost begging to be used.

The Seductive Scent: dark basil plant on windowsill, also from Whole Foods - I took a few leaves. No one saw me.

The Scavenger Hunt Booty: pre-washed red radishes, and pre-cut white-with-green-splash cucumber - Yeah, somebody else did the work. But, if I didn't take it, it'd end up in the trash. Probably. Waste not, want not, and what not.

The Staples: Team 1, The Fridge: grated parmesan, mixed-pitted olives, feta, pickled peperoncini

The Staples: Team 2, The Pantry: sea salt, olive oil, sherry vinegar

The Rejects: limp mesculun lettuce and dry, chicken breast leftover from yesterday's Taco Night - I'm a artist, not a junk man.

The Sensual Break-down:

Color: bright yellow (pepper), yellow-green (pepperoncini), dark green (basil); red, highly contrasted with white (radish)

Texture & Sound (Crunch): peppers; radish; long wet slivers of cucumber

Texture, Slippery or Smooth: emulsifying effect of grated parmesan & feta crumbles when combined with vinegar & oil; feel of rotating oil-soaked olives on tongue as they resist the teeth

Scent: Basil (proof there are forces for good in the universe)

Taste buds: salty (cheeses, olives, anything pickled), mildly sweet (pepper); mildly bitter (radish); sour (peperoncini, vinegar) tempered by oil.

The Salad: So good, I ate it before I remembered to take a picture for The Whatever Cook.

Image: Oracle ThinkQuest Education Foundation

Comfort food is associated with childhood and home-cooking. For me, it includes Portuguese and Mediterranean dishes -- the food that permeated my childhood.

Comfort foods engage many sense receptors: our taste buds, our sense of smell, our sense of texture, how a food feels on our tongue and fingers, our visual sensibilities, even our hearing. Consider: snap, crackle, and pop.

It's moist. It's got enough salt/seasoning, and fat to make you feel satisfied after eating one serving, though we may want to go back for seconds if we ate quickly, and didn't give our bodies time to feel a natural sense of fullness.

The Portuguese used to take three hours off from work -- 12-3 pm -- to eat the main meal. Perhaps in some places, they still do. To my dad, eating standing up was akin to sacrilege. [The spiritual life of food is a post for another day.]

Some examples of my comfort foods:
Steaming chicken soup (NEVER low sodium);
Mom's salad made with vegetables from her garden, including crunchy cucumbers, hand-torn lettuce, and seasoned by hand with oil, red vinegar, salt, and pepper (Mom literally coats the ingredients by hand);
european-style french fries, slightly soggy and salty;
caldeirada, a slightly spicy seafood stew similar to zuppa di pesci or bouillebaise;
chicken legs cooked in almost any form;
and fresh bread with a crisp crust and moist insides.

I used to scoop out, loosely ball up, and eat the bread’s guts like it was candy. When my mom and dad discovered hollow loaves of bread, they would teasingly demand we search the house for a rat.

Did you notice my pattern? I want texture and salt. If you took salt away from me, I would collapse (probably literally because I have low blood pressure). Salt is my family entitlement. It’s what I happily ate as a child.

Not surprisingly, our minds respond positively to happy memories, and memories from childhood are the most powerful. Sensual memories from childhood are deeply embedded in the most primitive parts of our brain. They’re the last memories to go.

When we get what we want, we become happy, however temporarily. On a rotten day, a sensual, nostalgic meal gives you a slice of heaven. Eat the slice. Life really is that simple.

[See: scene when The Critic first tastes ratatouille in eponymous Disney movie for a fabulous illustration of the power of nostalgia and family-friendly sensuality.]

Next UP: Easy Food Explained

Creativity Can't Stay Down: Picante Strawberry Salsa

My new year's resolution was to give up cooking. Seriously. I try to learn too much new stuff on my own. (Jewelry making, marketing, Hebrew, etc.) Plus, theoretically, I'm writing a book. Then there's My Quest for Meaning, which is, I admit, a major drain on productivity. (See: Woman of the Verge of a Mystic Breakdown.)

Oh, and the two kids. MY PLATE IS TOO DAMN FULL.

There is only so much change a human can accomodate in a short period. All change is stressful. Admittedly, not all stress is bad. But, consider, you too are human. Blah blah blah. Routine! That's the secret to success, no matter what motivational books might say. Establish routines, and stick to them. Have a bedtime routine. A morning routine. A laundry routine.

Because it's the only path left for me to try, I embark on a quest for normalcy and routinization. And so, cooking or creativity in the kitchen must go. It's too hard for me to follow recipes, or even remember more than one step at a time. Know thyself. Recognize thy kyptonite.

Keep it Simple Stupid/Students/Sonny. First, I tell myself, organize no-cook meals for the kids. My teenage son creates a two-week meal schedule. I sign up for regular time to get deliveries of groceries from Fresh Direct. I set up Google Calendar. Baby steps. I starting looking at my Google Calendar daily. (This month's goal: try to look at calendar on weekends too. Sigh.)

But, normalcy is practically impossible. I don't stick to the approved menus and shopping lists. In fact, most of the time, I don't even carry shopping lists with me. I do impromptu stops at stores because they were "on the way."

Ah, attention deficit disorder: I don't know if I "really" have you, but, if the symptoms and remedies match up, does it really matter? A distraction by any other name would pull me away just as fiercely...

Strawberry Salsa

I buy too much Fresh Direct hot salsa. It was on sale. I know I shouldn't succumb to buy 2 & save gimmicks. Rationally, I know. "Where are the Nachos?" my husband asks. Who thought of nachos?

I buy too many strawberries, which I bought on impulse Saturday along with other fruits and vegetables. They looked so good. My son asked for strawberries. My small child requested we stop the car now! and buy a healthy snack from a Manhattan vendor. Am I to stay on schedule and say NO? So we circled and circled city blocks until mommy gave up and double-parked.

So, I scan the refrigerator. Too much hot salsa and too many strawberries. Eureka! Add the chopped sweet one-day-before-rot strawberries to Fresh Direct hot salsa. Serve on Sweet Potatoes chips.

I'm back. The Whatever Cook. Though probably not so much with the "cooking." Creative food things for people with short attention spans.

Comfort Soups

Each September as school begins, the boys bring home new things. Alas, they keep sneaking in viruses & boorish bacteria.

So, for the last month, I've been battling these creative, ever-mutating mico-demons & my only culinary interest has been SOUPS, the more comforting the better. And the Grandmother of all comfort soups is Chicken.

My mom makes canja; her secret is dark meat, particularly chicken legs. I was a terribly picky eater, and her chicken soup is one of the (very) few things I have eaten consistently since I was a child. And pretty much every time I come for a visit, she has chicken soup cooking for me.

Simply, comfort foods are foods your mom made to make you happy & foods you wished your mom had made to make you happy. Many are savory, i.e., brothy because water, salt, and that slight starchiness appeal to our primal nutrition needs.

Traditionally, the secret to canja, Portuguese chicken soup, is lemon peel & mint. Lemons belong in every medicine cabinet, aka, refrigerator. (Another key Portuguese comfort item is lemon tea, made to cure vast numbers of discomforts & illnesses.)

My Go-To cook book for all things Portuguese is "The Food of Portugal" by Jean Anderson. She has the classics: Green Soup, caldo verde, made with potato puree, chorico & collard or turnip greens; canja; vegetable; stone or empty-the-fridge & panty soup; fish stew/chowders; dry bread-rich acordas; & gazpacho.

Another go-to book is Jaime Oliver's Jaime's Dinners. The "Naked Chef" has a nice consomme, which I modified by adding a chunk of ginger during simmering. It's a great book that includes "Five Minute Wonders" & Sarnies (Sandwiches in American)-- which is my kind of cooking, particularly when colds & flu get me down & getting out of bed is work enough. He has lots of English-isms, like fish & chips & mushy peas. The former sounds great. The later, not so much. He also has a recipe for "Scrumptious Spanish Chickpea & Chorizo Soup." Anybody who uses chorizo, spicy paprika-red sausage, knows about flavor.

My friend Mira also hooked me up with a great site, which has soups from all over & creative ones, such as crema de guacamole, as well as "a good soup for the sick," a "miraculously delicious soup" made w/ beans, water, garlic, shallots, chiles. Medicinal classics.

"Total active prep time was under five minutes, the rest is just waiting and anticipating." FIVE MINUTES! OK, it would probably take me 15 minutes, given my current skill level, but I'll be trying that one soon.

Making Refogado—Portugal's Basic Sauce

Recently, my mom made a refogado -- THE sauce/paste that forms the basis of most Portuguese cooking. Typically, you cook onions in olive oil for 10 minutes, then add garlic & cook for 10 more minutes, then add tomatoes & cook for an additional 10 minutes -- all over LOW heat. However, about 10-15 minutes BEFORE cooking the onions, my mom had started the tomato part of the sauce in a separate pot. And she cooked the onions as well as the tomatoes in olive oil AND butter. You don't need much fat because the onion "sweats" & releases its own liquid.

After the onions had cooked for approximately 10 minutes, my mom added chopped garlic to the onion pot. After approximately 15 minutes of cooking onions (& 30 mins of cooking tomatoes), she combined the tomatoes & onions/garlic into one dish. Spices added were piri pir (hot sauce) & colorau, which is similar to Hungarian paprika, another Portuguese staple. Then she added the shrimp, which only takes a few minutes to cook, but my mom let it sit in the pot for 10-20 minutes to soak in the sauce. At the end of cooking, she added chopped parsley, fresh from the garden.

I tried to make the more traditional version: 10 minutes onions (low heat, covered pan to let the onions sweat out their liquid to create a thin sauce); 10 minutes garlic; 10 minutes chopped tomatoes from my mom’s garden. I peeled & seeded the tomatoes, but my mom doesn’t bother. If you cut the tomato finely, it shouldn’t matter, but if you use big chunks of unpeeled tomato, the skin falls off into sauce.

To de-peel & un-seed, I boiled water & dropped in tomatoes--with top stem & pithy part cut out--for one minute & then grabbed the skin off in blocks. I cut tomatoes in half & scooped liquidy part into a small sieve over a cup.

You could discard the tomato liquid, but I wanted to save it to put back into the water in which I boiled tomatoes & use that to later make a soup. Portuguese country people of my mom’s generation are super frugal & upteen frugal habits sunk it. I cringe at the word “discard” in recipes & try to use EVERYthing, which, by the way, is a great creativity exercise. Take the vegetables from the stock I made for my previous blog. I was supposed to discard them, but I couldn’t do it. I later pureed the onion & celery & that was basis of a creamy spicy garbanzo soup.

Back to refogado. I used the refogado base to create a shrimp pasta sauce. I added a 28-oz can of crushed tomatoes w/ liquid, heated to boil, then simmered for “a while.” I added frozen, cooked shrimp—on the theory it would heat in sauce & not become tough, but shrimp released lots of water into the sauce & messed up the consistency. Condensation in action. Ooops. The sauce wasn’t adhering to the linguine. So I took out the shrimp & dumped sauce into a blender, pureed it, & re-heated in sauce pan. Voila, mistake de-mistaked. So, umm, defrost frozen shrimp first & drain the water. Perhaps pat dry shrimp too. That way shrimp can absorb sauce liquid instead of diluting it.

Here's a section from my mom's garden. Tomatoes grow upside-down in flowered planter. Frugality in action: my dad re-used the frame of an old glass table to serve as a trellis for growing vines/stalks.

Stocking Up

Portion control, not ingredient castration, is the key to happiness & good health.

Buying stock from specialty shops is crazy expensive, so I figured: why not make it? Chicken stock is too much trouble & having to endure the smell of fish for hours is a deal breaker, so Vegetable Stock wins.

Reading around, I concluded: cooks in one hour & save time by not peeling or cutting veggies. So I took a large pot & added 3 large carrots, 2 onions, 3 garlic bulbs, several celery stalks (5?), peppercorns, and a bay leaf. The bay leaf, louro, was THE most essential herb my parents used. I can’t imagine my mother cooking w/o it; it’s great for stews & soups & any other long-simmering food.

So, I washed the veggies, discarded the bottoms & tops & threw (unpeeled) veggies into the pot. Some Internet posters say you can add the tender inner stalk-less leaves of the celery, but ALL WARNED: DON’T ADD the tough leaves at the top of the celery stalks because they’ll turn the stock bitter.

I added water to the pot, and cooked for about an hour; after the water came to a boil, I turned heat down to low, but kept it covered. One hour later, I put a colander into a smaller pot, and poured the stock into it. That way all the solids would be retained (to be discarded), and only the liquid would be saved.

Since I had the water boiling w/ veggies, I thought: why not cook the chicken breasts in the fridge that were on the edge of spoiling?. I put breasts in stock for 20 mins (?) or so. OK, I’m totally guessing; I forgot to hit the start button on timer. Alas, I overcooked the chicken.

In the future, I’m going to check chicken pieces after 10 minutes, then 15 mins, etc. & take them out when they’re ALMOST cooked, but not fully cooked, so that I can cut them up & use them as an ingredient in another meal. That way the chicken still has a few minutes of “cooking life” left, and will be fully cooked, but not overcooked, for re-incarnation, say, as an ingredient in a chicken quesadilla or jambalaya, etc.

I know, I know. What about e coli & salmonella, etc.? Given germ-freakiness, I’d been prone to overcooking chicken, but I’ve decided to mend my ways. Overcooked chicken tastes terrible & I’d rather go vegetarian than eat any more linoleum chicken. I rarely order chicken when I eat out. Unless you’re at a multi-star restaurant, you can expect the chicken to be overcooked.

Also, I’m flummoxed by the American obsession w/ chicken breast. OK, it’s lower in fat, but that’s another way of saying: breasts are tougher & less juicy. Rule of thumb: Natural fat = yummy. Portion control, not ingredient castration, is the key to happiness & good health. I prefer chicken thighs, i.e., dark meat, which has enough fat to compensate for my under-zealousness. I happened to have breasts because they were on sale. You get what you pay for.

Why I Write

Friends & I saw Eat, Pray, Love last weekend & bantered while eating Italian food about what was our “Word.” In the movie, an Italian friend of the protagonist said that each person & each country has a word that best describes character. For America, Julia volunteered “ambition” & her word turned out to be “we go” (or something like that) which in Italian is simply one word.

I said my word was, “Whatever.” My friends laughed, but they seemed to think I was being somewhat negative about myself. But I meant Whatever positively, meaning that I try to be open to experience & take on whatever comes my way & make the best of it. That’s the goal anyway.

My husband quips that I’m a fatalist; I let life happen to me. True, the Portuguese, of which I am true blood, have a tradition of fatalism; the liner notes to any Fado CD will tell you that (but more on my Portuguese-ness & cultural fixed ideas in future blogs).

I’ve had type A go-getters & self-described optimists label me as pessimistic or passive. But I’ve also seen many of those same people turn into angry whiny jerks in situations where they don’t get their way & passive-aggressively refuse to adapt to the agendas or wishes of others. While ambition & focus is desirable professionally, such drivenness can also make people bad at life & bad at relationships. Take workaholics. I suspect the high divorce rate is partially due to unwillingness on the part of one or both parties to “let go” of their desire to hyper-control their lives & compromise &/or take turns being adaptable to the goals of the other.

Whateverness can be highly active. It’s a creative approach to life, reveling in the possibilities of even the smallest interactions, activities & objects. Even the stupid things I’ve done or the bad experiences that I have to endure can be used as raw materials for new (better) ways of living life. Or at least I can write about it. I have a masters in fine arts-creative nonfiction & wouldn’t it be great if I could put some of my over-thinking to good use?

So I present the “whatever” mindset as Virtue (w/o, I hope, being preachy). HOWEVER, ALL THIS PHILOSOPHIZING IS JUST BACKGROUND & THE SUBSTANCE OF THE BLOG IS MY ATTEMPTS TO TEACH MYSELF TO COOK USING RECIPES AS MERELY GUIDELINES & OFTEN JUST PLAYING w/ INGREDIENTS TO CREATE GOOD FOOD. I’ve been described as an intuitive cook & (this time) the label fits ;)

I plan to get my father to cook w/ me & write about it. He cooks Portuguese food & taught himself to cook Italian by working his way up from dishwasher to sous chef at an Italian Restaurant. Sometimes, I’ll link longer essays to the blog that deal with cultural & emotional issues related to cooking. I’m also hoping friends will cook one of their favorite foods w/ me & let me write about the experience.

Ideally, I’ll generate recipes AFTER I cook, and post some of them. My goals are to:

1) Create simple, EASIER & FASTER-than-TAKEOUT food (I joked to friends that I might name the blog: The Half-Assed Cook)

2) Pass on principles that allow a cook to play effectively w/ food, so that the vast majority of what you cook comes out damn good.

3) Turn cooking into leisure, so that even when a “recipe” takes time & effort, it’s fun or generates flow, in that, you get so wrapped up in what you’re doing at the moment, you forget you’re working, i.e., time flies.

So in short, this blog is my exploration of a Whatever approach to life, and it starts w/ my attempts to teach myself to cook by playing with food & connecting with the cooks in my life, in the hopes of becoming THE Whatever Cook ;)

Yesterday, I made chorizo-flavored vegetable stock & cooked potatoes & chicken breasts w/in & used that to make Mariscada for dinner, using Fresh Direct pre-packaged “cook’s helper” seafood package. I also made Greek Chicken & Potato Salad for lunch, using one cooked chicken breast & some of the potatoes. (Vegetable stock is SOOO MUCH easier to make than chicken stock & gives major taste bang). Today I used the stock & leftover chicken to make Chicken Orzo Soup. My next post will be about that.