My Domestic Education

I can still remember the first time I ever tried to cook anything. It was in high school, and my mother had decided it was time for me to learn how to cook. Being that we had a nanny who made dinner every night, I never had to make a meal before, nor did I have any desire to. Needless to say, I was not incredibly excited about this cooking lesson.

Dinner that night was chicken and broccoli. Seems like that should be easy enough. My mom basically made the entire thing, even though she gave me full credit when dinner was served. Later, I tried cooking the meal on my own. I burnt the chicken to a crisp. Not only that, but for some reason, the middle was still raw. How does that even happen? I was convinced at that moment that I was not destined to ever be good at cooking.

For the longest time it didn't matter. After high school, I went to a college with the best food service in the nation. No need to make food for myself when it was so readily available, and delicious. Once law school hit, I had resigned myself to years of lean cuisines and chicken on the George Forman grill until I could afford that personal chef (why else go to law school but to afford a personal chef, right?). In all honestly, I would get bored if I tried to make anything more complicated than those two items.

Everything changed once I met my husband. Something about him made me want to do anything I could to take care of him and make him happy. Being that he had an Italian mother who was an amazing cook, I knew that part of keeping him happy was keeping him well fed. During a long break from school that I spent with him, I decided that I would try and cook his favorite food, lasanga. When I got intimidated by the idea of lasanga, I found what seemed to be a much easier option: lasanga rollups. To my amazement, they actually turned out pretty good, and were a big hit.

My lasanga rollup experience sparked a light in me that I never thought would come out. I actually enjoyed cooking. I started looking up new recipes, and using Joe as a guinea pig. While I will admit, I still have to google terms in recipes that I didn't recognize or didn't know how to do (where else do you learn how to zest a lemon), my knowledge has grown over these last couple of years, much to the amazement of my family and friends.

Now, instead of laughing at me for asking how to heat up spaghetti sauce, my friends laugh at me for saying that the 4 meals I cook a week are all off pinterest. When posting on facebook about a meal I was going to try to make, my former roommate commented "who are you and what happened to my former roommate."

This blog will chronicle my journey into domestication. While more likely than not there will be alot of fails, I'm excited for the successes as well. I'll be sharing recipes that I'm attempting (mostly off pinterest) as well as other adventures.

Hope you enjoy!