Discovery Cooking

      Eating is one of the greatest pleasures in life, especially when enjoying a delicious and mouthwatering dish. Food can make us evoke many things, can make us remember our childhood memories as in the film Ratatouille, maybe a trip, a special occasion, a person, also emotions...

      Why am I writing about cooking? It's about inspiration rather than recipes. I was watching the movie Julie & Julia and felt identified with the character played by actress Amy Adams (Julie Powell). Like me, she wanted to try something new, she was excited of creating a blog, she was stuck in a job, so cooking turned into a way of having happiness in her daily life.

      I always hated to cook, constantly avoiding kitchens, used to go out to eat most of the time, which is ok, but at some point I was getting tired of this lifestyle. Never tried different dishes when cooking, it was a duty, a way to save money.

      After quitting my last job and doing some traveling, realized that an enormous amount of free time was not good for my emotional health. I needed to find something new to do, otherwise I would go crazy. So one day I found by chance an article on the internet about Indian food. I don't know how many hours I spent in the supermarket, I bought vegetables, exotic sauces (already bottled of course) and spices. Long time for cooking chicken curry with vegetables, the kitchen was a mess, well, nothing is supposed to be easy in the start. Next, I tried Arabic cuisine, made tabbouleh and falafel, but I don't what happened, mixed all the ingredients in the blender to prepare the falafel, added too much parsley because the paste was extremely green and for some reason wasn't thick, It is not necessary to mention that I had only tabbouleh and bread for lunch that day. However, falafel is still on my mind and soon I will try to make it again.

My chicken curry with vegetables was supposed to look like this one.

Falafel: I will try it again!

      Sometimes, on Saturdays, I visit a Libanese restaurant in Caracas to try all those different dishes they cook, so delicious, which give me an idea of what I could make. Cooking is an excellent way to have a busy mind, for instance, I have bough several cooking books and also keep searching for new recipes on the internet, going to the supermarket, looking for ingredients, going back home to cook, reading the recipe like 20 times while in the kitchen. It's like magic, the mind is just focus on what I do, eager for a final result. There are so many cooking books, workshops, TV programs, recipes and tips on the internet, that one can feel overwhelmed, finding hard to decide where to start while becoming a culinary autodidact. I started with Indian and Arabic food, and there is so much more to try, creativity is endless when cooking.

      It's a surprising new skill, I hated cooking before and now love it, I can't wait to make an exotic new dish. Next goal is Mediterranean cuisine: Greek food! Sorry if I don't have any photo of the dishes I've done, but the art of food presentation is not mastered yet, still learning! 

      I'll be searching the internet for recipes that are easy and not so expensive to make while getting familiar with the cooking world.

                                                                                                                                          Till next time!!!