Cooking from Scratch

I enjoy cooking. And it’s a good thing too, because coming from a Nigerian background if you want to have any hope of marriage; you better know how to throw down in the kitchen! I have to say though that my cooking knowledge base has expanded dramatically since moving overseas. Never one who likes monotony, I’d often try out new recipes on the family to spice up our hmmm, shall we say predictable food menu J However when you move overseas, depending on your location many things are no longer available to you. What? Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines don’t exist here??? And what do you mean you’ve never heard of break and bake cookies?

So rather slowly I began the process of learning how to do without staple spices and ingredients while discovering multiple ways to cook……an eggplant for example. At first I will admit it was a daunting task. Ever try to cook when you’re hungry? Not exactly the time to learn that it’ll take hours to cook ANYTHING because it’s all from scratch. No throwing together of frozen veggies and chicken breast here!

Then...........................I discovered online recipe websites.

Ohhh, the difference it made!

My favorite is allrecipes.com because it allows you to do an ingredient search. So say I want to make a dessert but I only have flour, sugar, eggs, and apples; then I can do a search for all the desserts containing those ingredients. To say it’s been a life saver would be an understatement. I can often be found in the kitchen with my computer whipping up a new dish……from scratch. There are of course some dishes that bomb (i.e. the charred chicken stock disaster that had our apartment smelling for a week). But overall, it’s been fun to learn new recipes. It also helps to have very supportive and non picky eaters as roommates!

Here are some of my favorite dishes I’ve made so far:

Peanut butter chicken (thanks Mentanna!)

Brownies (that could rival Ms. Crocker’s any day ;)

Peanut butter yogurt dip for apples

Chocolate mousse

Szechuan Spicy Eggplant

Garbanzo and Pinto bean salad

Chinese Roasted Chicken

Turkey sausage and white bean soup

Ginger veggie stir-fry

Chips and Salsa
Hummus