Kat: Surprise!

I feel very privileged to know what makes me happy; cooking, food, wine and all things culinary put a smile on my face and a spring in my step. Whenever I have a lousy day at work, or am just feeling blue, I know that I can turn to my kitchen and...Surprise!...I instantly feel better. When I caught myself feeling depressed a few weeks ago, I decided to take it to the kitchen. A couple of months of stressful wedding planning had drained my enthusiasm in the kitchen. I knew the remedy to my blues was to crank up the creativity in the kitchen. The only catch was that I felt like I had forgotten how to cook!

After some thinking, I decided to turn to some old reliable friends....my favorite cookbooks! I knew if anyone could help me out, they could. I picked one recipe for each night of the week, went shopping, and jumped into my week of culinary therapy.

I started with the book that was most recently added to my favorites list...Amanda Hesser's brand new masterpiece The Essential New York Times Cookbook.


It's a wonderful book full of readers' favorite recipes from the past 150 years. I picked a couple of recipes that I could make with pantry staples:

Moroccan Chicken Smothered in Olives (page 482)


and Moroccan Carrot Salad (p. 187)

Both were easy and delicious and very simple to make; just a couple of ingredients and plenty of spices in both recipe.

If you're interested in becoming a better cook, I suggest that you invest in this book! There hundreds and hundreds of recipes ranging from very simple to complex. I plan to cook my way through this book and soak up all the techniques that I can!

...more recipes from my cookbook week to come!