i love cooking just as much as my mom and sister, who are both fabulous cooks. but one thing i didn't quite inherit was their love for recipes and cookbooks. well, to an extent. i love cookbooks and love recipes and use them all the time, but i think the fact that i really started cooking a lot my first year in asia majorly influenced 2 things about the way i cook: 1. generalizations and substitutions. just because i can't get a lot of typical ingredients here, doesn't mean i don't make things, it just means i have learned to substitute rather liberally. and, well, i am just kind of a chaotic cook and change recipes to do it my way in whatever way seem best. i think recipes work better as guideposts than lab experiment steps, so substituting for lots of things fits right in. 2. cookbooks weigh a ton. and that means i only have about 3 or 4 that have come with me from america. i love them. especially for basic things. but needing a more extensive recipe collection led me to allrecipes.com, which is where probably over 50% of my recipes alone come from. but this past week, i took the dive into food blogs. i know that they have been all the rage for a few years, but i didn't really get into it until i was searching for an awesome pasta salad recipe with spinach, chicken, peanuts, sesame dressing and a whole lot of other things in it that i made last year, but never wrote down. anyways, i finally found it again and that led me to spend a couple hours (i know, hours) perusing some food blogs. and i just wanted to pass along my current favorites because i think they are really great. the majority of the recipes are really simple, but look absolutely delicious. but a number of them were super creative and i can't wait to try them. and why lie, i'll probably change them anyways :)
here they are:
and here is another one that my friend marrianne told me about that is interesting for recipes, her funny story, and some pretty cool pictures of the american plains. she makes me think even i might want to live on a farm, and we all know what a stretch that would be.
and ps- i think being paid to blog is about the coolest job ever. pretty lucky people, they are.
