Thursday, August 27, 2009

Whatcha Cookin' Good Lookin'?

Ever since I graduated I've gotten really into cooking. I think it might be because I never had my own kitchen because I lived in Chi O where all our meals were made for us. I watch the Food Network ALL the time pretty much (Giada is my favorite!). And I love to try new recipies (thank you Chelsea Jo for my fabulous cookbook!). And... I just got a job at Williams-Sonoma, so I'll definitely be using my awesome discount I'll get. Cooking has pretty much become a fun hobby for me. It's actually really relaxing I've found and very therapeutic.

Recently (well actually more like a month ago since I've been terrible about updating) my aunt came to visit and after that my uncle and my cousins came up as well. While they were here we decided to try some new recipes and cook together. It was so much fun!! I highly recommend cooking together with friends or family. It's such a fun activity to do together, AND you get to enjoy a meal together afterwards, double plus! :)

Having too much fun with kebabs :)

First, my Aunt Natasha and I made chicken kebabs. We marinated the chicken and veggies in a delicious citrus marinade and grilled some corn. I have to say that I didn't grill the kebabs. I've actually never grilled anything, but I am going to try soon. A grill just seems like such a man's domain; I think I'd feel like I was intruding, haha. The dinner ended up being a "Yellow and Orange" Dinner because everything we ate was yellow and orange (pineapple, corn, peppers). It was a fun lil' theme that we discovered after we had cooked everything.

Our "Yellow and Orange Dinner"

My cousins Gwen and Iggy, and my Uncle Andrei came up to visit the Bay Area for a couple of days. While sitting around I had an urge to bake. I've been baking a lot lately, tarts, cakes, cookies, you name it. That day my cousins had visited Ghiradelli and bought some of their decadent chocolate and caramel squares. Gwen came up with a brilliant idea to make chocolate cookies and place 1/4 of the chocolate caramel Ghiradelli square inside the cookie. The final product was a chocolate chewy cookie with a gooey piece of caramel heaven inside.


Baking with Gwen and silly Uncle Andrei


Baking the cookies ended up being a VERY messy process but that made it a lot of fun! We had to roll the cookies in a lil' ball and then place the piece of chocolate/caramel inside, but as you did all this the cookie dough was melting and getting all over the place. But honestly, I think this is the best type of baking/cooking. Getting messy is part of the process. ;).





Yum Yum!!

By the way, I'm sure there will be a lot more cooking entries. I have to catch up and learn how to cook, because I never really used to and never really tried when I was younger. I'm sure I'll learn a lot along the way. In fact, I've already made a few mistakes in the kitchen (which I talk about in a later entry). Should be an interesting new hobby....

1 comment:

  1. Remember when we watched Giada in Panama? That was cool. Remember the girl who sent you cookies in the mail? She was cool. You know what would be REALLY cool? If you sent her cookies in the mail!

    Sasha-it's exciting to see you cook. It makes me feel like less of an old person cooking in the kitchen by myself :)

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