Hi everyone. Here is the first of the cooking obstacle confessions by a reader:
My cooking obstacle is complete and utter lack of vision. I always buy all sorts of fresh vegetables, fruits, have a variety of grains in the house and a full spice rack. We eat some meat, but not much – love cheese. what I’m trying to say is that mealtime shouldn’t leave me stymied. Sometimes I see a recipe and think “why couldn’t i have come up with that”. Really, at my advanced age of 48, I’ve sort of accepted that this is just not one of my gifts. There are 5 of us in our family and I wish very much that I could throw something together without being recipe dependent. Some of us are REALLY challenged in this department!
Oh, anonymous, I want you to know that you are not alone. It sounds like you have great intentions to cook, are educated in healthy eating but then get stuck. Let’s look at your strengths: You actually go out and buy the food-you allot time to shopping. Excellent. You buy fresh, healthy produce and stock your spice rack. You are making an investment in your cooking life but just need a little guidance to take it a step further.
Without knowing much about your cooking habits, I do see that your interest in recipes may mean that you aspire to create. I am wondering if you crave the creativity of making up your own recipes which keeps you from being open to following easy recipes from others? If that is the case, why not try some easy recipes with few ingredients (I recommend “Everyday Food Magazine by Martha Stewart) and then try to build on those with your own creative twists with new spices and some of your favorite cheeses thrown in there? You may be surprised at how gifted you really are with a little practice!
Additionally, I am wondering why you want to cook from home? Are you concerned about health, economics, nurturing your family? When you discover why this is so important to you, you may find it easier to muster the energy to persevere.
I hope this helps and keep us posted! Please send in YOUR cooking obstacles so we can address them!
Now to our recipe of the day, Ana’s Gazpacho! She is only here for 2 more weeks so we must milk her for all her Andalusian recipes!
Ana’ Gazpacho:
5 Large tomatoes
One green pepper
one cucumber, unpeeled
2 TBS olive oil
one TBS white vinegar
One half a baguette of stale, french bread , soaked in water and then sqeeze out the water
two cloves of garlic
Optional to garnish: chopped tomatoe, pepper, cucumber, onion and pieces of day old bread
Instructions:
In a blender, put the tomatoes, pepper, cucumber, vinegar, garlic, oil and bread. It should smooth. If you want it thinner, add a little water.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve or colander with very small holes to make sure there are no seeds from the tomatoes and cucumbers.
It’s important to serve it very cold so it should be in the fridge for a while before serving.
Serve with the garnish in small bowls so people can add what they like.
3 Responses
I was actually going to send you a note saying "don't let her go back to Spain without a great gazpacho recipe!" Thank you for this. Gazpacho is one of my favorite things.
Of all your wonderful tasty recipes I have tried, this is the only one that y bombed with my family.
The addition of half a baguette to the gazpacho made the color orange and caused my not picky eaters to say the soup looked like puke. Indeed it did.
My husband and I managed to eat some but we threw most of it away.
This was NOT tomato-y gazpacho. Have you tried this recipe Alma? What was your experience? I love gazpacho, but I like mine red and tasting like tomatoes…
Wow, so you didn't like it? 🙂 This is actually how gazpacho is prepared in many parts of Spain and I actually prefer it to the chunky kind. Sorry you had a bad experience but we have been lapping this up for weeks!