Sunday, January 3

#12

I made a feeble attempt at #12, I must admit.

First, I went through all my cookbooks and gave away or sold cheap cheap those I knew I would never cook from. (Hence reducing the number of recipes I have to tackle. It's not cheating, it's strategy.)

Next, I went through all the remaining ones I couldn't bear to part with -- Nigella, Harumi, Jamie, perhaps a dozen in total -- and slapped Post Its on those recipes I wanted to try.

My first -- and only effort -- was a cream cheese muffin from Harumi, which seemed simple enough except that I used plain flour instead of self-raising and produced inedibly tough 发糕 by mistake.

The rest of last year's kitchen experiments were mostly from the greatest cookbook ever, also known as the Internet.

In March, I made an ice cream layer cake for two friends' birthdays, and salad and grilled tomatoes with honey vanilla balsamic vinegar.

In August, I made my very first casserole, with leftover chicken and Campbell Soup.

In December, I made up for lost time with cranberry muffins, chocolate bread and butter pudding and doggie biscuits.

There may have been a couple of batches of cookies and quite a number of ice creams and sorbets in the course of the year, but I cannot remember them without photo or blog documentation.

Even though I did not accomplish the goal of #12, not by a long shot, I'm going to cross it out nonetheless, because I realised that (a) I only like to look at food porn and reading recipes, not following them, (b) my actual cooking is based on sudden cravings, which I then satisfy by Googling and then modifying the recipes, (c) cookbooks never stay open and also get dirty in the kitchen and I can't bear that happening, and (d) I did make about 12 dishes, which seems like a good number to me.

Oh, and this isn't going to stop me from buying more cookbooks this year.

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