The Galloping Gourmet-ette

If I only had:

a) endless people to feed (as I’m a good Ukrainian woman and cooking for two often turns into a gourmet feast for 10)

b) all the time in the world to play in the kitchen

c) a credit card in someone else’s name to charge groceries to

…I would spend all day in the kitchen inventing, experimenting and attempting new recipes!

Time to comment on my other other great passion (other than crafting and merlot-ing)….cooking!

Ever since I can remember, my older sister and I were in charge of making dinners for the family. This in particular came to be when mom went back to work.

Cooking lessons at home started with tried and true good ole home cooking…spaghetti sauce, stroganoff, and tuna noodle casserole. Once these became like second nature, we got a little braver. (I remember one weekend when we were teens, making dinner for my parents….maybe their anniversary? We made it all fantsy-shmacy with all the courses: appies and soup. Salad and entrée. I think we even braved it and made dessert!)

 Since then, with a little help from my food courses in school, I have learned so much and have loved every minute in the kitchen. And as far as I know, I haven’t poisoned anyone yet ;)  

 The other day I attempted my second attempt at making beef stew.

My first shot at stew...well it was not so hot. I am kind of an impatient person, so when I decided that I just HAD to make stew for dinner that night, the beef was still frozen-ish. K…rule numero uno: when making beef stew, you wanna caramelize the heck outta it to get that wonderfully rich, dark, cooked all day kinda flavour. You cannot do that with frozen-ish beef…all that happens is it boils and turns it to grey, sludgy nastiness. Lesson learned.

Second lesson that all aspiring cooks should know: It all tastes better with wine. Most of my cooking-capades involve some motion lotion (aka merlot) which most of the time ends up in dinner. When I was younger, I would hang the recipe card in the cupboard and pretend that I was the host of a cooking show. Now, I prop it against the wine bottle and call myself The Galloping Gourmet. 

Drunken mushrooms, drunken beef, a little dab behind the ears and ring the bell: dinna is served!

I may have patted myself on the back with how well it turned out this time...K, well let’s get real here...I cheers-ed myself with another glass of wine ;)

Cheers!