The Domestic Goddess Comes Out

It's so hot in here I have to step outside to cool off.  Not that I should complain, heard on the news it's possible parts of South Australia will make 50 Celcius this week.  That's 122 Fahreinheit.  That means dead birds falling from the skies, dead pets, wildlife and livestock, possibly dead people if they don't heed the warnings and find someplace cool. 

Yet the governments still play fast and loose with climate change.  But I won't go there.  Perhaps this is the place, but it isn't the time to have a rant.

I spend more time cruising cooking sites than I do anything else.  My current favourite is 101 Cookbooks (http://www.101cookbooks.com).  It's vegetarian but not vegan.  I find if I scroll through the comments following a particular recipe using a non vegan ingredient someone will usually ask what could be substituted.    Either that or they will suggest one.  The one I just copied is for a tempeh curry recipe.  She uses cream but I'm going to use coconut milk (as suggested by one of her followers). 

I wasn't going to use tempeh again.  I made the tempeh and orange juice recipe which was fine but it was the messiest dish.  The tempeh threw oil everywhere and I had to mop the floor of oily spatters before I could continue.  Richard, forgetting my anti-tempeh pronouncement, bought it again hence my cruising the cooking sites. 

Still have trouble recognizing myself.  I spent fifty years staunchly refusing to cook anything other than the half dozen recipes I could make without much trouble and with little thought.  Remember timing how long it took to make a salad (10 minutes) because I didn't want to spend any more time than I had to in the kitchen.  Now I daydream recipes.  I start planning what I'll make for dinner about lunch time and rehearse it while walking the 6km with the whippets.  Richard wonders who took his wife and substituted me.  Wonders but doesn't grieve.  He likes the new Domestic Goddess version better.  

As do I.  I understand the lure of cooking now.  It's the creativity.  Even though I'm following recipes there's still room to improvise.  I rarely have every ingredient and even if I do, I'm still anxious to try the dish at the end to see how it turned out.  No wonder cooking is the most popular category on Pinterest.  I've got a binder full of recipes I've copied.  Haven't tried them all but I will.  I've copied three recipes today.  The last one is the tempeh curry.  We'll see how it goes.  One nice side effect of me doing almost all the cooking is Richard doing the dishes.