Oh, God. It’s happening. I’m obsessed with something new. Long live the short attention span 🙂

I’m taking a Guild vacation for the holidays, attempting to write a new project, procrastinating like a pro. And for some reason, I’ve become fixated on cooking. I did a themed cooking gift for my boyfriend and it got me on a major kick.

I’ve cooked 5 days in a row, which I think is a world record for me, and I’m astonished by:

a) How hard it is to find a middle ground between my boyfriend’s taste for meat and potatoes and my taste for tahini and tofu.

b) How there will always be one ingredient that I overlooked, and improvising is too anxiety inducing for me, so I have to go to the store every night.

c) How many #$#$@% dishes that I can dirty for one %&*% meal.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my new regiment. I give it at least 2 more weeks before I go back to Daddy Wong’s delivery. And I find it strangely comforting to open up the fridge and see all that tupperware holding leftovers. I never eat the leftovers because I gorked out so bad on the initial experience, but having it there is so…domestic. Maybe it’s the holidayspirit.

I have several cookbooks I’ve been using. Unless it has pictures and wide margins, forget it. How do people use those ones with non-glossy paper and micro print?!?! My favorite, which all my friends and family have because I’ve spread it around like a bad disease, is Seriously Simple.

This book is basically the bomb. All the recipes are great, except for the orange chicken which turned out blah for me. The sausage pasta recipe can be made in a trough and eaten throughout the week, it’s so fantastic. Everything is Seriously Simple!! (insert announcer voice) The fish recipe where you basically toss in in a bag with olive oil and balsamic vinegar makes you wonder if someone is messing with your mind. It doesn’t look like there are enough ingredients to make something that could be good, but it does! Psych!

I generally like to use epicurious.com because they have that test kitchen and people rate the recipes, which has helped me dodge a nasty bullet a few times, plus it’s free and printable. But there’s something nice about seeing the pretty pictures, so I picked up the new Rachel Ray Cookbook yesterday. “Yum-o”. Yes, that’s right, that’s the title.

I didn’t look that close at the cover at the store, I was distracted by a picture of some chocolate thing when I was flipping through. So, had I seen the words “YUM-O” blazened across her boobies, I might have thought twice about my purchase.

Also, this book is basically an amalgamation of her other books, so there are no new recipes, which is fine since I was a Rachel Ray virgin, but that could tick off people who are fans. Also, by every recipe is the graphic “30 minute meals!” but then in the instructions sometimes it says “bake for 1 hour”… which is a betrayal, at best. She uses these annoying baby-talk terms in the book, like “evoo” for olive oil, and “stoup” for stew/soup mutation recipes which makes me want to slap the book. “Stoup” sounds too close to stupid for me to be comfortable with the term, but I made some tonight, sausage rabe and white bean, and it was super yummy. Actually, here’s a picture!

Kinda looks like vomit if you squint, but it tasted super good. Anyway, my feelings are mixed about the whole purchase. My grandma thinks that Rachel is just “too cute!” so I’ll continue plugging away with it. I have to, I spilled tomato sauce all over page 59.