I often get into little cooking ruts. I've made lists in old cookbooks about the foods we ate all the time. Then, for whatever reason, those meals fade into obscurity. Some families keep a genealogical history in their bible. Ours keeps a food history in our cookbooks.
For example, I can't remember the last time I made balsamic glazed pork chops, but apparently it was all the rage in 2008. I remember making it when in laws visited our little Provo townhome and again when I was done with law school finals. And I'd remember doubling the sauce and eating it for days on potatoes, stinking up the carrels with its pungent, garlicky goodness.
Spinach salads with poppy seed dressing and strawberries were the summer of 2008. I remember trying the dressing at Jennie's and swearing I could drink the stuff. I also remember trying to make a homemade batch and finding I was incredibly allergic to it (but weirdly, not the store bought stuff). This led to me flashing my law school girlfriends to show off the ridiculous red rashes. I can understand if you blocked this memory, but for me, it's forever tied to spinach salad.
Edamame and diet coke was the Winter of 2009-2010. Lost in Translation brought a bag to class one day and I was hooked. We worked at a publishing company together and gabbed constantly and shared salty bags of edamame as we sipped from the office supply of diet coke every day. I've tried to resurrect my passion for the little beans, but it's not the same unless you're eating it in a classroom or in a dark and stuffy basement of a publishing company.
It fascinates me to watch these trends grow and die--sometimes by necessity of the season, and sometimes they just end for no reason. Right now I find that the trend is: meat + booze x 6 hours in a crockpot = dinner. I'm getting out of a brief but powerful "don't make me cook" funk, and as delightful as french dip sandwiches, pulled pork, stew, and pot roast are, I can see I'm at the tail end of this phase. Time for "real" cooking once more.
So what are you eating now, friends? Do you get into food trends/ruts like I do?
5 comments:
Yes. The determining factor is if I make it poorly one time. I was on an enchilada kick. Then I overcooked the chicken so it was inedibly rubbery. Then I refused to make enchiladas for months and months and months. Then I bougth a pre-cooked chicken from costco and used that meat. Chris hopefully asked "does this mean you're back to making enchiladas?" we'll see...
We went through a gyro phase, we ate them once a week. Haven't had any in over a year. I'm really off pasta with sauce from a can right now.
We have started making sweet and sour meatballs...on a weekly basis. I don't know why they taste so good but they are amazing. Yummy! Also I recently ended a baking phase. I was baking bread left and right. Nothing like homemade rolls. I think it ended when my pants stopped fitting.
I ate sandwiches for lunch pretty much for eight years straight. It took me until my mid-twenties to be cool with sandwiches again.
I make a lot of soup these days. Soup is good because you can put almost anything in a pot of soup (within reason). I tried my hand at cucumber soup because I had about six of them ready to go bad. (It was a failed experiment.) I'll probably be sick of soup in a few months.
I go through baking phases, too. I'll make gigantic batches of bread dough and make six loaves in one week. I will go super healthy granola and only make whole wheat bread, and then go on a stint of sweet breads and cinnamon rolls and junk.
My interest in Greek yogurt waxes and wanes.
OK, yeah, I'm apparently more fickle with my food than I had previously anticipated when I began this comment. Or perhaps I will just say that I have an adventurous palate.
And ironically, my word verification is "unfed."
I work with a woman who for the last nine years I have known her has had a peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich plus a piece of fruit for lunch every day. And . . . she uses the same paper lunch sack for an entire school year. Then she retires it and gets a new one.
As for me and my escapades in the kitchen . . . I go through streaks. However, they are streaks of cooking vs. not cooking. I frequently go on strikes, some lasting months. Everyone fends for themselves or we go out to eat. Right now, I am cooking but it has been about a week and I feel it coming to an end. We ate out the last two nights.
I have been through some very weird food phases.
For a while, in high school, my after-school snack was ground beef. Yep, just ground beef. Maybe with a candy bar from the mini mart if my dad and I stopped there on the way home. Oh the follies of youth!
As a freshman, I ate almost exclusively out of the vending machines. So lots of pop tarts, beef jerky, chocolate milk, carrots and ranch, and hot pockets (ugh).
Sophomore year was chicken a la Jenna and hot chocolate. Chicken a la Jenna is basically chicken covered in an orange juice and balsamic vinegar reduction. And by "hot chocolate", I do not mean hot cocoa. I mean an expensive bar of chocolate melted down with milk and cream. Suffice it to say I gained about ten pounds.
Junior year was organic chemistry year, so studying took precedence over eating. I lost that sophomore ten! Although I did get in the habit of adding bacon, garlic, and peas to Annie's organic instant white cheddar mac and cheese . . .
Senior year I got pneumonia and lost a lot of weight. So to gain it back, I ate a doughnut every day (great plan, I know). That was a hard habit to break!
While in Germany this summer, I was constantly using fresh onions, garlic, and tomatoes to make pasta in a tomato-balsamic-butter sauce topped with fresh mozzarella balls. That was all we could afford. We ate PB&J and apples for lunch. Every. Day. Cue more weight gain.
Now that I have a bunch of fantastic wedding present cookbooks at my disposal, my cooking has become more diverse. Although I did make the pasta concoction again this week for old times sake.
Also, I can attest to Terry's cooking-no cooking phases. She cooked dinner every day when I was little, but then went on strike when I was in high school. Hence the crazy ground beef snacks!
This has become very long. Lo siento. Maybe take it as a compliment that I am so compelled by your post?
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