Random Topic: Describe your cooking skills as a newlywed

It's no secret I love to cook. I'm really contemplating dropping out of school and eventually going to culinary school. It's not even that I want to make a serious career out of it, but I really enjoy being in the kitchen. I love watching cooking reality shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen. Watching these neat challenges where they use all sorts of ingredients to come up with a common theme and fusion of flavors is so interesting to me.

Anyway, I always dreamed of the day I got to cook for my husband and when I got married, I was so excited to be able to do that for M. For the first few months, I wasn't working so I had so much time to find recipes, go shopping at the commissary, and come up with super neat meals. One thing my aunt instilled in me was meal planning. Every time you went to her house, she had her calendar on the fridge with the entire months worth of meals listed. I took this on as well and had a wipe off board on my fridge listing our meals and I would scour over my cookbooks each month finding neat things to make. I always tried to do a different "theme" night each week as well with Greek foods, Italian, Thai, etc. I think our very first meal together in our apartment was home made Tzatziki & pita with Greek chicken and home made rice pudding. :)

For a long time, I was fearful of cooking meats because I was so worried I would always under cook. I've become so much less fearful in recent years, but now I fear the grill. Fire and gas scares the bejeezus out of me. I always feel like it's going to explode. Silly me. My next challenge is to conquer the grill this summer.

Another thing I really need to improve on is my knife skills. I would LOVE to take a class here locally on this very subject. I cannot for the life of me cut an apple without practically dismembering myself. Thank heavens for my very favorite chopper device from Williams & Sonoma. I try to watch how the pros do it on the shows and replicate. I did learn not to put my finger on the top of the knife blade from the show "America's Worst Cook." The chef would walk around and put a Sharpie mark on the finger of everyone who did it while they were chopping to prove a point. It worked for me :)

Anyway, I am looking forward to someday in the future being reunited with my husband and being able to cook for him again. I am at my happiest when in the kitchen and when I'm traveling. Oh, and I have a rule...when I'm in the kitchen...you GET OUT. My quote...

"Get out of my kitch bitch." ;-)