Kitchen Duty

Trying new things is the best way to spend summer vacation. Next would be having a sleep-eat-sleep-only routine 24/7.

For this summer, I opted to learn how to cook (and practice yoga, but that's another story). If green thumb is for gardening, I just don't have whatever you call its counterpart for cooking. Yes, we sell longanizas and a lot of other food but that does not automatically make me a kitchen goddess. Cooking just doesn't come naturally to me. So one of the first things I did upon arriving home was declaring that I wanted a cooking lessons from our cook. Unfortunately, our cook got sick and I didn't get my lessons.

On the bright side, my family has a collection of cook books, which listed lots of dishes and desserts from all over the world. I enjoyed fantasizing that I was constructing culinary masterpieces. However, not all my fantasies end up only as daydreams. No. Many of them actually came true, thanks to my handy work.




Today, I tried preparing something healthy. Note that "prepare" was my action word, not "cook". You see, I prepared a fruit salad (not the sweat and creamy type you get in Pinoy fiestas and parties but) with homemade dressing.

Sorry for the lack of creativity, but see how wonderful the different colors are?

The salad has slices of avocado, papaya and mangoes while the dressing was a mixture of mango puree, sesame oil, ginger, honey and lemon juice. The latter wasn't up to the standards of my Filipino palette, being used to having my fruits sweet, or sweetened if needed. But, it was healthy, and that was enough reason for me to disregard the taste and savor the nutrients within.

I would like to point out, though, that you should be very careful with the amount of ginger you add. After a a few hours, my dressing started to taste from vinaigrette-ish sour to spicy. It was unlucky for me to have lost the rest of the flavors.

Experience really is the best teacher.

Disgustingly zoomed in. Enjoy!

For the past week, my culinary journey included beef teriyaki (with mom), cheesy pesto linguine (also with my mom) and carbonara (with my aunt and some changes in the recipe). Except for the burnt bacon, everything was edible, thank goodness. (I wasn't feeling the need of photographic evidence of my dish, thus the lack of it.)

So how's your summer coming along? Does it include some experiments in the kitchen like mine?