Sunday Cooking

I did not help my mom in the kitchen very much while I was growing up, unless you count making my own school lunches and learning how to make certain foods that I wanted to eat over and over again, like mashed potatoes and chocolate chip cookies.

So when I was living alone as a younger adult, I soon realized that I didn't know how to cook real food.  Recipes had mysterious ingredients in them, like "stock", and unclear commands, like "cut the butter into the flour".  Obviously I avoided those recipes until I had made all of the other ones with easier instructions.  I even tried once to make soup not only without stock, but also without onions.  I have never liked raw onion, and I hadn't yet realized not only that cooked onion completely different than raw onion, but also that cooking an onion is the beginning of almost everything.

I made a lot of gourmet grilled cheese with tomato soup from a box and relied upon Amy's Organics frozen meals for my lunches at work.  I ate out a lot.  I was not unusual among my peers in this, but I know my parents were confused.  They knew that I should have been on a budget, so my habit of eating out frequently seemed strange to them.  But, that's what we did; as entertainment, as a vehicle for socializing, as a way to feel grown-up, and probably because suddenly delicious food was quite hip.

Big Girl Pants (Not the Maternity Kind)

People have been asking me how my new job is going.  I find myself not wanting to talk about it, for a variety of reasons.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.  Some of my initial reactions have been quite negative, but since I have a history of feeling that way when faced with a new job in a new field, I have been trying to fight those feelings.  And, since it is not full-time and I have not yet completed very much paid work, I have been resisting the urge to say terrible things about it.  The lulls in the schedule have also provided welcome moments for me to step back, take breaks to do something else when I have wanted to run screaming in the other direction.

I Love Carbs

I have written in the past about how irked I am by the Paleo diet trend.  It seems unsustainable, extreme and controlling, several qualities that do not feel comfortable in my food life.  I should care what other people are up to, but for some reason the Paleo thing gets to me.  Also, I just really love bread and potatoes, so even if the math added up on the Paleo diet, I could still see myself living with the risks of flour, just as people now openly encourage pregnant women to go ahead and have that occasional glass  of wine.

In fact, this year one of my goals is very flour-focused.  After years of hemming and hawing about wanting to make bread after one or two long-ago failed attempts, I have finally made some progress.  I have successfully caused dough to rise, and navigated my way around a packet of yeast.

For my weekly attempts in the beginning of the year, I stuck with one basic white/wheat yeast bread recipe and repeated it several times until it became more comfortable.  But this week, I have cleared a new hurdle: the soft pretzel.

We Almost Made it To a Food Truck (But Now It's a Cafe)

So food trucks are all the rage these days and Houston is no exception.  Since we tend to prefer fresh and casual dining over fine dining, I imagined that we would be tasting all kinds of goodies on the go when we moved here, but instead we have not really bothered.  To be honest, sometimes it is tricky to know where they will be and when.  Aside from that, we just don't eat out as much as we used to; disappointing and expensive restaurants combined with a tight household budget while we were in Calgary finally pushed my tastebuds to prefer homemade food.  

Pregnancy has reinforced that preference; eliminating all of the forbidden ingredients from a restaurant menu is not only an exercise in patience and sleuthing, but takes out some of the fun out of the restaurant experience.  Even though I try to be relaxed and not excessive while following healthy pregnancy guidelines, when I know that my body might be creating a brain that day, or strengthening a spine, I don't want to have that be the day that I give in to the listeria-contaminated feta, or let myself enjoy that (half) pint that I've been craving.

However, we recently had a chance to sample the goods of one food-truck-turned-cafe that has been getting some attention here in Houston, called the Eatsie Boys Cafe.  We enjoyed some fresh and tasty sandwiches on a sunny patio and it was quite delicious.  We didn't quite get there while it was still a trendy food truck, but at least we didn't miss the good food.