chocolate melting

I melt my chocolate in the microwave. It saves about a century of time and a pile of annoyance! The trick is to microwave it until it's ALMOST melted and then just stir it around until it melts the rest of the way.

guest chefs :)

If anybody wants to share a recipe, insight, or whatever, email it to my email address. (Sorry I'm not posting it right out here in public, but that's how it is.) :) I would love input from other people too!

foods I want to try

shellfish
duck
veal? (don't know if I'm brave enough for that one)
actual non-Cod fish
octopus

as you can see, I'm really trying to get acquainted with the ocean here. :)

clam chowder? me?

Let's get something straight: Seafood really creeps me out. I just can't stand it. So imagine my surprise when my aforementioned Best Friend In The Whole World and I made clam chowder together, and I really liked it! Of course, I scooped out my bit before the actual clams were involved, but there was clam juice in the soup and it was YUMMY.

I have resolved that this year I will try very hard to overcome my dislike of seafood. After all, it seems quite silly to live in New England and not like seafood, doesn't it?

chocolate mousse

I made chocolate mousse the other day and it was damn tasty. Six squares of Baker's Chocolate and 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream is all you need! The recipe is straight out of the Baker's Chocolate cookbook that my sister Alison got me for Christmas. Well, sort of. They said six squares of white Baker's Chocolate and I did three squares of bittersweet milk chocolate and three squares of sweet dark.

So, you melt the six squares in 1/4 cup of whipping cream. Then you whip 1 1/4 cups whipping cream and stir it into the chocolate mixture. And then you're DONE! I'm sure there are other, much harder recipes to make mousse, but I decided to start with the easy way first. It was darned tasty, too, so THERE. Who needs separated egg whites and confectioner's sugar?

The only thing I would change is that it said to refrigerate the mousse for at least two hours and it was actually WAY tastier before it ever got chilled.

Why a cooking blog, exactly?

My best friend in the whole world has been on a natural/healthy/organic kick for a year or two and has gotten me pretty excited about it. She invited me to do an experiment with her this year where we will challenge ourselves to do more things at home in a natural way, for ourselves, rather than just buying pre-made stuff and going along with the Consumerist American lifestyle. For me this means (for one) that I will be doing a lot more cooking from scratch, and I thought I'd keep a record to see how I do!

Other than that, I just love messing around in the kitchen and am excellent at willfully disobeying recipes. I like to share what I discover, so I'll be posting my own recipes here too.

So, I guess I'll get to it. :)