Baking: check. Cooking? ....needs work.

.
I finally feel like I've got baking under control. I can look at a recipe and not be overwhelmed by the ingredients. What I've made:

Sugar-rum banana pastries (kind of a disaster. Phyllo dough is tough)
Apple cake (a little mushy, but pretty delicious)
Blueberry muffins (totally awesome)
Maple-Cinammon cake (my chocolate chips sunk to the bottom, but it was yummy)
Ricotta cookies (not too bad)
Peanut butter cookies (dry but yummy)
Brown sugar brownies (yum!)
Banana bread (totally awesome)
Regular white bread (100% handmade and 100% edible =P)

I'm sure I'll be making more desserts as time goes on, but for the moment, I definitely feel like I can look at a basic baking recipe and rock it out.

Excellent!

Now, it's time to work on cooking real food. Dinners, etc.

Here are some things I want to learn how to make:

Risotto
Potato Gratin
Eggplant Parmesan
Anything with tofu
Anything with polenta
Dinner crepes
Really delicious meatballs (yeah, I know I'm veg. More on this later)
Baklava (for.... dinner? Um. What!)
Sushi
Any kind of curry
Any kind of pot stickers or dumplings (I think they're the same thing?)

I think I can do it. It might take me a while, but I'll make them all. Eventually. >.>

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I also think I'm going to have a weekly article, where I buy some new weird ingredient and make something with it. I was in the grocery store a while ago, and was buying spinach because I always make sauteed spinach with everything, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw some kale just chillin there. Oh hey kale, what's up.

So I bought said kale, made sauteed kale (it wasn't that good - not the kale's fault, it was my own), and anyway, despite it being kind of raw, I was super excited that I had bought and made something totally new.

And when I'm watching the food network, they're always using weird ingredients like starfruit, or bulgur, or pine nuts, or something else that I've never thought of using in my cooking.

I go to the grocery store at least a few times a week (I don't have a car, so I make several small trips throughout the week, only buying as much as I can carry home with my own hands), so that will give me ample time to browse around and find something totally off the wall to cook with. =)