About 3 years ago now, we began the process of having our house made wheelchair accessible. One of the rooms, which needed to be addressed, was the kitchen. Neither my walker, nor my wheelchair could fit through the space between the counter and the peninsula. So I would have to transfer to this little secretarial type chair on wheels and use that in the little cooking area. This past spring, after waiting “patiently” for a few years, our kitchen was made accessible for my wheelchair. One of these days, the cabinets will also be accessible, but that is another storyJ. Anyway, I share this because the other day a friend, who had not been here since the renovations, was over and asked me if I cooked better because my kitchen was more accessible. I had to laugh.
Is it easier to cook – yes. Do I cook better – no.
Read moreMy Favorite Ingredient
The other day I was completing my profile on foodbuzz.com – it is a community for food bloggers. Perhaps the question I found most intriguing was when they ask you to list your favorite ingredient. For practicality purposes, I listed butter, but I could have easily put cheese. The problem is that my favorite ingredient is one that will never come up in an ingredient search on any recipe site. Foodbuzz.com, food.com, foodnetwork.com, and any other recipe sites you can think of do not list my favorite ingredient as an ingredient. Yet this one single ingredient can totally transform a dish for me.
The interesting thing about this ingredient is that it is not something you can teach any culinary student to use. There is not a store in the world where you can buy this ingredient.
Read moreWelcome to the Zenful Kitchen
Several months ago, I began having this series of dreams about being on the Next Food Network Star. My culinary point of view is that being in the kitchen does not have to be stressful; it can be zenful. The name of my show in my dream was going to be The Zenful Kitchen. Over the last several months, I have had this same dream. The only difference being that, like the show, there was a decreasing number of people against whom I was cooking each week. This past week, I had the dream one last time and the focus group and the judges all selected The Zenful Kitchen as the winner of the Next Food network Star.
I thought the dream was neat for a couple of reasons.
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