On being a lazy parent:

We've all been there.  It's time to feed the children, but there are a thousand other things you would like to be doing than cooking.  Maybe the game is about to start, maybe it was a long day at work and you just want to sit down; it could be practically anything.  The point is that pretty much anyone-even those of us who enjoy cooking so much they feel like writing about it-don't always want to get stuck in the kitchen. 

Take this morning.  Boy and I had just returned from dropping off Wife at work.  He wanted to hop onto Netflix and finish watching "Garfield's Pet Force."  I wanted to do some prep work for the stir fry I was going to make for dinner.  Spending half an hour to make something fancy was out of the question.  Still, I didn't want to resort to cereal, cold or hot.  Our eggs were already claimed for other things.  It was a similar situation to the one that caused me to make the breakfast ramen I wrote about earlier.  This time, however, I didn't come up with any new ideas.  I turned to a cheat.

Quick and Easy Faux Asian Breakfast Ramen

Wife and I have very different strengths in the kitchen.  I got my culinary training, such as it was, from Job Corps.  Wife learned to cook from me.  This leads many people to think that, should they need advice in the kitchen, I am the one to call.  I am not. 

Perhaps it's a poor idea, when trying to establish a cooking blog, to talk about one's inadequacies in the kitchen.  However, it's the truth; I am very bad at the technical aspects of cooking.  I double check "The Joy of Cooking" to get the proper cooking time for baked potatoes.  I prefer it when Wife makes the rice.  Her skills lie in, well, skill.  When she found a roasted chicken recipe she liked she memorized it, and apart from minute changes in seasoning, she makes the same bird each time.  Mashed potatoes, gravy, and a small rotating selection of veg follow as if created on an assembly line.  This analogy may make the food sound uninteresting, but it's not.  Everything is tender, flavorful, and perfect.

Fish on Fire

I love cooking shows.  I love the brainy ones that actually teach the in's and out's of cooking like Good Eats, America's Test Kitchen, and Barbecue University.  I like contests of skill, like Top Chef, Iron Chef, and Chopped.  I even like sensationalized "reality" cooking like Hell's Kitchen.  But there is one show I just can't get into.

Man Vs. Food.

Quick and Easy Banana Ginger Oatmeal

Last weekend, I made Ginger Spice Brownies.  Even though I started from an old Nestle' recipe, I spent a lot of time fine tuning and worrying about the flavors I was creating.  I was going out of my way to try and make something that could be appreciated, both by anyone who was reading this blog, and by Mouse, who had asked me to combine brownies and ginger in the first place. 

This is not that blog.  While I'm sure I will approach the next thing I bring you with the same level of detail as I paid my brownies, this is a story of throwing things together, and being pleasantly surprised with the results. 

Ginger Spice Brownies

Lately, my mind has been on health. Diabetes has affected both mine and my wife's families, and as we put our twenties behind us, it's clear that we aren't in the best of shape either. In addition, while looking at innovative kid's food on Macheesmo, I followed a link in the comments to another blog about the deplorable conditions of school lunches; more links followed, and soon I was watching the entire first season of "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" on Youtube. I'd missed the show when it came out initially, because it was advertised as a companion to the cloying, in-your-face inspiration porn that is "Extreme Make-Over: Home Additon." While sometimes I find that "Food Revolution" does get a bit heavy handed with the importance of what they are doing, Jamie Oliver has a message I can get behind. It also helps that he's not this guy: