Uh, I can make a pretty sick hot pocket?

Find Sands, he's the real chef around here.

Find Sands, he's the real chef around here.

Far from it.

I do like cooking, though. Don't think many others enjoy my cooking too much, but it's enjoyable for me. I'm the world's pickiest eater so I usually do a lot of replacing ingredients if I get a recipe from someone else. Needs all the chili. Eating outside is way too expensive here to do it all the time and fuck the frozen premade shit. It usually doesn't even take that long to make it yourself from scratch and hell, often it even is cheaper.

Baking is awesome. Should be doing more of that but there's only one stomach eating that stuff and usually you get too much. Don't want to be eating cake for days, you know. I do live with someone who requires crepes now and then, so it's always fun to make some. And fast. I'll slap anyone who whines about stuff taking too much time. Unless it actually takes too much time. Then you're free to.

About baking. When you cook food, you're usually pretty free to replace stuff with what you want. Baking isn't like that. Be super careful and really search for what you can replace something with, because otherwise what you're baking will most likely fail. Baking is some crazy chemistry you can't just try to change and expect the same reaction. Measure your stuff really well. Stuff like flour is better measured by their weight than how many cups or whatever it is, because everyone's cup is different. Packed tight or not, do you have to sift it? Those will be different amounts of flour even if they both fill exactly one cup. Enjoy your super hard cake.

Yeah that's what we hear about baking. Nate's a bit obsessive with details when he cooks, which is why we are encouraging him to learn rather than me. I am awful at following recipes, I just throw in things and change it on the spot to fit my tastes. I know you can't do that with baking which is why I haven't messed with that too much. The only baking I do is pies on holidays. Or baked casseroles or whatever. But as far as bread and cookies, hahaha, not something we've been proficient at.

Right now we're getting ready to make some mushroom, spinach, and goat cheese stuffed chicken. Yum yum. Adding some garlic and caramelized onion too.

I definitely want to learn to be a better cook.
But I don't like cooking.
And I don't like cleaning.
If someone would cook and clean for me, I would be awesome at it.

I like to think I'm fairly decent at cooking. I've got some sourdough starter fermenting now, as I'm planning on making a sourdough calzone with mozzarella, extra sharp cheddar and sausage. However, to be honest, if I were to actually buy my own food, it'd be limited to beef, beef liver, fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes, white rice, eggs and dairy, while removing most grains (just about everything aside from the white rice, really), limiting nuts as well as pork and fatty cuts of poultry. Only spices I'd use would be salt (iodized) and pepper. I'm quite a minimalist in the cooking when left to my own devices, I guess. Do foresee a lot of bone broths, though. White rice tastes amazing in that, but I'd have to add more gelatine though.

We did just get a cast iron pan though (larger one, anyway). It'll be nice to make meat in there after giving it a nice sear. But it's a large one, and would take forever to heat up high enough to sear in it... Maybe I'd sear in another pan and then just place it into the other one after it's already been preheated in the oven.

I'm rambling now.

Not to mention, it saves on needing bouillon. But I generally like it for the gelatine content as well. Made some after last Christmas with a homemade broth from pork, I think it was. Slow cooked for about 2 days. Ham bone, onions, and a splash of apple cider vinegar to leech nutrients and marrow.

I might make a chili now and then with said beef / liver. Otherwise, I don't see me using it very often.

It's usually easier to make it from a liquid base, such as the broth I mentioned before.