Food!

I love food as much as the next person, and in recent years I've become a big fan of... making my own! Shocking, right?  Why go through all the trouble of buying the ingredients, dirtying 10 dishes, chopping, slicing, dicing, frying, baking when you can go to any local restaurant, order, and in 20min get whatever you want without breaking a sweat? I'm not sure about you, but I can only order the bacon cheeseburger and side of fries so many times without getting sick of it. 

There are soooo many different things to experiment with, we're seriously selling ourselves short by limiting our choices to the same 15 items found on every chain restaurant's menu. And if you've ever worked in the food biz or have seen the movie Waiting... that might send you running sprinting back home to the safety of your own kitchen!

I've had my share of successes and failures with cooking.  Baking desserts is usually a guaranteed win... except that one time I decided to bake cookies while home on break from college. Chocolate chip cookies from scratch! No cheater break-and-bake here. I was in the mood, I had every I needed, and thought that big container of Crisco waaaay in the back of the cabinet would substitute just fine for the remainder of the butter I was missing. Oh, was I wrong. One bite of my cookies and my dad was spitting them out, asking why they tasted like gasoline?! Apparently that Crisco was a little on the expired side. I took his word for it. And... in the trash went all my hard work.

I also fouled up an angel food cake after I got my new mixer. It was the easiest recipe ever! Simple, low-fat, and the perfect dessert to bring to my parent's house. Who on earth could screw up flour, sugar, and egg whites?? That would be me. Seems I didn't comprehend the instructions when it said to beat the egg whites into "stiff white peaks".  What should have been a 6in fluffy cake turned into a rock-hard 1in high pancake-looking thing that also went... right in the trash. So two minor screw ups in the kitchen, it happens. To my credit though, my banana bread is really really good! Counts for something, right?

On to non-dessert items, there's a really fabulous dish I borrowed from a local restaurant that took me a few times to perfect at home. It's from Tango in Bryn Mawr http://www.tastetango.com/ and it's their Angel Hair Spicy Shrimp. Below I posted a pic of this dish from Tango's website. It's the dish in the background, so you can sorta see it. I'm not a big pasta fan, but I order this almost every time I eat there, and it's oh so good! Here are the ingredients:

• angel hair pasta
• medium shrimp, butterflyed
• diced pancetta
• broccoli rabe
• pepperoncini
• diced tomatoes
• chili pepper oil
• minced garlic
• salt/pepper

I don't know the exact portions to write out a formal recipe, but I'm good at guesstimating, and I'm pretty sure the Food Network isn't going to be calling me any time soon... 
You just cook the pasta and throw the rest of those ingredients in. Voila! It took me a few times to figure this out, but you have to be really heavy handed with the peppers and spices. The hotness of the oil and peppers goes really well with the saltiness of the pancetta, but if you're too light on the flavors, there's no "wow" factor for the taste buds and your guests won't be impressed (for the record, my guests have always acted impressed. Let's hope it wasn't an act)

Maybe next time I'll share some more tasty recipes I've come up with (or stole from other places). Being your own chef is so fun and rewarding... if you don't screw it up!

I gotta go... time to preheat the oven now for that frozen pizza... just kidding