Saturday, October 30, 2010

Meet Your Food Perfectionist

Welcome to my laboratory notebook! My laboratory is a tiny galley kitchen with not-so-high-tech gadgets that I make due with in order to feed my curiosity and my appetite. A mother and wife, I am a non-traditional undergraduate student at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. If all goes according to plan, I should graduate with a Bachelor's in dietetics in May of 2012, then hopefully become a registered dietitian! 

Food is a passion of mine--I love to eat! I personally don't believe that any food is inherently good or bad, but that under- or over-eating and/or choosing foods that make a diet imbalanced is what contributes to disease and poor health.

This blog isn't about cooking "healthy" food. It's about learning and perfecting the techniques that create desirable qualities in food like lightness and fluffiness in baked goods, or tenderness in a cut of meat. I am not a professional cook by any stretch of the imagination, just someone who wants to emulate one. Nothing beats the feeling after attempting to cook something for the first time and accomplishing it without too many goof-ups. I take pride in following recipes to the letter, and pat myself on the back when the final product is "perfect."  I want to know why recipes call for certain ingredients or techniques and what these things do to make the dish so good!  I figure, if I know these things, then I can make a perfect cake/egg/steak/pasta every time, and this means even more food bliss for my belly.  Who knows, maybe I can even get to the point where I can create recipes because I know the formulas?

So, here's my plan:  I will research different things to make and perfect then every month I'll post the things I learned along with a recipe detailing how I got the perfect (hopefully) result.  We can learn together!  Even with all this geekiness, I know that no dish can be perfect without some joy and love going into the process, so I always include those two ingredients as well!  

This blog is a new adventure for me in many ways.  With this blog, I will attempt to fit more cooking into my crazy busy schedule, learn to expand and perfect my bag of cooking "tricks" and learn the ins and outs of being a blogger.  Thanks for joining me, I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I am sure I will :)

See you next month!
~Melissa

1 comment:

May May said...

Let me know if you unlock Lola's secret to making the perfect pitcher of Kool-Aid.