Truth Hits Everybody...

Today, in honour of Thanksgiving Day being tomorrow, I offer the top ten true tales of yours truly for two-thousand and seven. Not every entry will contain words that begin with the letter "T", but some may. Regardless of whether they have a "T" in them or not, the truth is in every segment. These tidbits of trivia are arranged in no particular order and are pulled at random from my brain. I hope you enjoy these memories with me.

So, let's begin...

1) I learned how to make chicken pot pie from scratch (except for the pie crust, which admittedly was store bought).

I really should share the recipe soon, especially since it's starting to get fecking cold out there. The reason why I'm proud of this accomplishment is that I love cooking.

There's something almost artistic about crafting food items in such a way that they will be tasty and hopefully pleasant to digest. I rarely have an appreciative audience so I find myself experimenting more for my own pleasure than anything else.

The prospect of making things from scratch is sometimes daunting, more so if there is a time constraint, which is why I have a backup list of easy to make meals that I run through over the course of two weeks. If I have time, I'll play a little with my food. I love to frig with recipes as well as to experiment with new ideas.

And would you believe that I'm able to cook dinner for $3 to $7 on most nights?

As odd as it may seem, I didn't really learn how to cook by watching my mom do it. True, she is an awesome cook in her own right, but it was really her father who first piqued my interest in the craft of home cookery. My grandfather, who had learned for himself how to cook by way of both cooking meals in the firehouse as well as learning at the feet of my grandmother (who could out-cook Chef Ramsey any day of the week and twice on Sunday).

It was after my grandmother's illness set in that my granddad took over the cooking full time. I was at the time a starving college kid, so finding foodstuffs that broke up the usual monotonous string of ramen, spaghetti, ramen and hot dogs was a priority.

For my birthday one year, he sent me a pressure cooker. Once I learned how to use the thing properly... Ach mein gott! Tastyfoods galore.

We used to trade recipes, everything from Chicken & Dumplings to those meat sandwiches that my grandma used to make for us. I learned a lot of getting the most for my dollar when it came to the food budget and found that I actually enjoyed the process of cooking, a form of creativity in itself.

-----To be continued