Since its inception, this blog has received over 7,700 hits (thanks mom and dad!); been picked up as a regular column for in-Training, a peer-reviewed medical student journal (thanks Ajay and Aleena!); and gained acceptance to an AMSA Medical Humanities conference. It has also introduced me to peers passionate about food and others who work in nutrition. Over a year when I've spent many hours alone studying material that departed from my previous schooling, this blog has connected me to others and to my past self, who was interested in writing, public health, and cooking. Thanks to all my readers!
I've also had friends tell me that they "don't cook" or that they try to cook but that the results don't taste good. A friend started a mock "medschoolfailblog" in which he would send me photos of dinner disasters. My two cents is that learning to cook is a matter of practice and becoming familiar in the kitchen. I grew up sitting on the countertop or helping to chop vegetables while my dad cooked; this gave me and my brother an incredible level of comfort in the kitchen. On the other hand, my first cooking experiments in high school were failures: inedible Italian egg drop soup (canned broth does not equal chicken soup), tomato sauce that would not taste as good as my dad's (I learned to give in and use butter). Over several years of practice and simplification (fewer ingredients, fewer random spices), my cooking has gotten better. There's still the occasional bitter or bland or painfully weird tasting dish: I recently got overambitious with a cold rainbow carrot-cumin-quinoa-chickpea salad that I refused to accept as inedible and which I attempted to save by pureeing into a sweet tasting hummus before tossing it into the trash.
So tonight's post has no recipe but I encourage you to cook something, and if it tastes good, to let me know!
I've also had friends tell me that they "don't cook" or that they try to cook but that the results don't taste good. A friend started a mock "medschoolfailblog" in which he would send me photos of dinner disasters. My two cents is that learning to cook is a matter of practice and becoming familiar in the kitchen. I grew up sitting on the countertop or helping to chop vegetables while my dad cooked; this gave me and my brother an incredible level of comfort in the kitchen. On the other hand, my first cooking experiments in high school were failures: inedible Italian egg drop soup (canned broth does not equal chicken soup), tomato sauce that would not taste as good as my dad's (I learned to give in and use butter). Over several years of practice and simplification (fewer ingredients, fewer random spices), my cooking has gotten better. There's still the occasional bitter or bland or painfully weird tasting dish: I recently got overambitious with a cold rainbow carrot-cumin-quinoa-chickpea salad that I refused to accept as inedible and which I attempted to save by pureeing into a sweet tasting hummus before tossing it into the trash.
So tonight's post has no recipe but I encourage you to cook something, and if it tastes good, to let me know!
Carefully documented, beautiful looking,
totally inedible rainbow carrot-cumin-quinoa-chickpea salad
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