Food Glorious *Everyday* Food

I love love love food! As I have gotten older my palette has matured and evolved right along with me. When I first moved out and lived on my own I dabbled here and there but mostly I just brought home food from wherever I was a waitress. When I began living with Garrett, we had a deal I cooked breakfast (because I was awesome at it and created great eats) and he had dinner as he loved to dabble and create tasty yummies off the top of his head. As our relationship grew so did our tastes and my desire to expand our hum-drum routine of same'ol same'ol. I started to embrace the role of wife and cook dinners more often, especially when I stopped waiting tables and became a full-time student. I found I was home in the evenings on a regular basis and maybe I could have a nice hot meal ready when Garrett got home from a long day. 

So began my journey into becoming a novice cook. I followed recipes to the letter, never deviating or sprucing it up as Garrett might say. Plus all Garrett ever wanted was beef and more beef. Now don't get me wrong a juicy burger or steak is always in my repertoire but I loved all the different things you could do with chicken and thankfully Garrett was willing to go with my chicken flow. At the time a girlfriend of mine was a far more creative cook, her meals were gorgeous, delicious, and healthy. This inspired me to venture out a bit more. I found lots of great cookbooks and recipes to try out, but sometimes they just required too many things, staples and other items we just couldn't quite afford during that time. That's when my girlfriend found Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Magazine. I have the first volume too BTW. The meals were awesome, we had a great time cooking dinners together for our men! And so my cooking experience graduated from novice to slightly better.

As the years have passed I have become more aware of all the great dishes out there. I particularly enjoyed the Food Network and learned a lot. Watching the chefs do a guesstimate measurement with a pinch here, a dash there or whatever the recipe called for they rarely used a utensil to measure. I loved it, it was all about taste and using your best judgement for what was needed to make the dish great! But my cooking was always a bit hindered by the size of my kitchens. Living in apartments in the burbs of Seattle were small and kitchens likewise. So when Garrett and I moved back to our hometown I finally gained a kitchen of reputable size, one where the two of us could cook together and not get in each others way!




Turkey Chili in Tortilla Cups
Everyday Food Magazine
#79 p.84

  That alone inspired me to embrace my new home, my new kitchen, my new role as a quasi-mom and cook nightly delights! I found that having a plan helped enormously. Create a weekly dinner menu and shop with ease from there. Everyday Foods became my inspiration. Our choices of dinning delights expanded by leaps and bounds. I could master anything in my kitchen! For example just this evening we had Turkey Chili in Tortilla Cups and oh my oh my. I am never buying canned chili again. Lili loved it, Garrett even he loved it. Yes my poor hubby is sick with a nasty chest cold, high temperature and still raved about it.

I have found a new appreciation for food and cooking and the ability to tweak a recipe to become your own. For example in volume # 79 there is a Mini Cheeseburger recipe that I tweaked into Mini Turkey Burgers with Cheese. OMG are these just amazing. In another volume I found a recipe for Asian Turkey Meatballs with Carrot Rice and WOW, spicy and light yet filling. If it wasn't for that specific recipe I never would have had the courage to attempt my own regular turkey meatballs to go with my from scratch spaghetti sauce. No more jarred stuff for us, nope! I create my own sauce. And interestingly enough its never the same twice, but always just as good as the first! After Garrett had these two completely different types of turkey meatballs he was in agreement, we'd stop buying ground beef and continue to go with ground turkey from that point on! Yeah for healthy eats! My man has come such a long way and I am so proud, MR. I ONLY EAT RED MEAT! *tee-hee-hee*

One thing I have always loved about my hubby and our marriage is our joined love of really good food and that Garrett has never been afraid to venture out with me in trying something different. The two of us have come up with some great dishes just from not wanting to buy it or thinking we could do it better. One night we were grocery shopping for dinner and found in the meat display a gourmet ground beef with peppers and cheese. Garrett wasn't willing to pay the price per pound so we bought some plain beef and different fixings to concoct our version of a gourmet burger. And yes it was the most delicious burger I had ever had at home! Mushrooms, bell pepper, feta or blue cheese crumbles with an onion bun or whole wheat, lettuce, onion, jalapeno ranch, and whatever else sounded good. The next weekend we invited some friends over to try our new dish and yup it was a hit.

That story is just one of many I am finding myself being able to tell about my marriage! And just one of the many reasons I find myself falling in love over and over again with my man and with food. Is that too gushy for you? Sorry. But it's true. Our common love of food glorious *everyday* food has helped keep our marriage fun and fresh!

Thank you Martha Stewart and your kick arse magazine! I have found more ways to broaden our dinning experiences thanks to your ideas and suggestions, not to mention I have become a pretty darn good cook in the process!