The Meal I'm Most Proud Of

In the time I've been seriously working on my cooking, I've had some successes that I feel pretty good about. I made a green chile stew once that I seriously wish I could reproduce. The turkey I made at Thanksgiving time in 2010 turned out REALLY well. And cooking for a group of friends felt good, too.

But you want to know the meal I'm most proud of?

Dinner.

See, I've eaten a LOT of mediocre meals - meals that weren't nutritious, or cost too much, or just didn't taste all that good. All too often, my meals have been all three of those.

I never anticipated that my cooking would become a hobby in the way that it has. My biggest goal was simply to be able to make something reasonably tasty and reasonably healthy out of my own kitchen. Further, I wanted to be able to do that without a big production, without a lot of planning, and without a cookbook.

It's taken longer than it seems like it ought to, but more and more often I'm able to accomplish that objective.

Tonight, for example, I was trying to figure out what to eat when I got home.  I decided that I'd work up a quick vinaigrette and mix it into a can of white beans. Then, in the elevator, I figured that I'd thaw some green beans to toss in. When I went to put this together, I noticed that I had some canned tuna and thought that might make a good addition.

It's tasty!

(It turned out I didn't have any canned white beans, so I used garbanzos.)


I -love- it when I pull of a dinner that's both somewhat balanced and moderately tasty. It's just such a sharp contrast to so many meals I ate over so many years. And it means that I'm meeting my goals.

And that feels great.