Food Network junkie

I can't pinpoint exactly when it started, but sometime over the past year, I've become really interested in making whatever food I'm preparing really good. I've been cooking my own meals for about eight years now, but used to be very practical about it, seeing food as something to keep me going with occasional splurges or efforts to make something special. I used to find it difficult to make something interesting if it were just for me. Somehow, somewhere, that changed. Maybe it was the book Taste that K gave me, or spending Saturday evenings making dinner for ourselves and slowly enjoying a bottle of wine with F, getting a culinary schooling from R who cooks at restaurant quality or better - when's the last time *you* made preserved lemons? see?

I think what tipped the scales for me was getting the Food Network. It was and is a real eye-opener and inspiration to take things up a notch. I've gone from making things that were alright to growing herbs in my window sill - basil, mint, rosemary, and parsley seem to do OK - to making the breakfast bread I've always wanted filled with raisins, cranberries, orange rind, cinnamon, vanilla, walnuts, almonds, whole wheat flour and flax. R teases me is inching its way to becoming fruitcake, but I swear, I've only used a little alcohol once when I had no oranges. A little Curacao never hurt anyone, right? Seeing Jamie Oliver get so much enjoyment out of simple, fresh ingredients, Ricardo Larivee make an effort to support local producers, Iron Chefs' creative variations on an ingredient (and I don't mind that there's some prior-to-show knowledge), and of course, the sweet, pretty Laura Calder whose mix of French cooking skills and girl-next-door charm leave me weak-in-the-knees and craving toasty baguette, creamy Brie, and an earthy Bordeaux.

To leave you with something useful, here's something I've discovered prevents the burning eyes brought on by chopping onions: I've found that if I take the cutting board over to the stove and turn on the overhead fan to at least medium speed, my eyes don't burn. Apparently, if you have a gas stove, you can also burn off the syn-propanethial-S-oxide gas.

Bon Appétit!