Yummy Yum-Yums

So, out of school and unemployed, I've been killing a lot of time in the kitchen. While being job-less is starting to get sad and pathetic, getting my cook on has been pretty fucking satisfying. Cooking for my family every day is like being on Top Chef or Hell's Kitchen. but when the food sucks, angry dudes don't yell at me; instead, noses are upturned and peanut butter sandwiches are discreetly consumed.

I've enjoyed a remarkable rate of success, though. These are some excellent recipes I've been using:

• Farmgirl's illustrated guide to PITA BREAD. Man, this shit is fantastic. It isn't overly complicated, and extracting little puffed-up breads from the oven makes me happy inside.
  
  
• From New Zealand, BUTTERY CARROT SOUP. It had a much mellower flavor than I expected, which was good (I was expecting it to taste like V-8 Carrot Juice or something).
  
  
• WHOLE WHEAT TORTILLAS. They taste amazing. I never want to eat the wimpy, comparatively flavorless store-bought kind again. My tortillas aren't as flexible as they could (should?) be, so I need to work on that. I use olive oil rather than shortening. We've never, ever had shortening in our house. Ever.
  
  
• Homemade GRANOLA BARS are delightful. Basically, the recipe is 3 cups of oatmeal, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk, and 3-4 cups of whatever (I use walnuts, cranberries, and raisins). I omit the butter, and I've never successfully removed the bars while still warm. I cut them while warm, then refrigerate them so they solidify, then remove them from the pan. These granola bars could function as currency in my house. I usually hoard them in the far recesses of the fridge.

Lately, I've also made potato gnocchi (an almost worthwhile nightmare), "Hawaiian Egg Bread" (never again), and focaccia bread (yay!). Knowing how to cook shit is pretty awesome. While I sweat over the hot stove or cover my hands in gooey bread dough, I always have this internal diatribe about how, in industrialized nations, corporations attempt to divorce us from the knowledge of food production. I have this feeling that parents don't pass on recipes to their children like they used to, and if they do, they involve blocks of Velveeta and cans of condensed cream of mushroom soup. Yeah, I'm unemployed so I have a lot of time on my hands. But cooking from scratch - real food, not factory food - doesn't have to take all day. This is a claim created by ad executives to sell Hamburger Helper, Easy Mac, and Applebee's entrees. That is not food. That is bullshit.

P.S. If you haven't already, read Michael Pollan's "Unhappy Meals." It really hardened my opposition to "lite" substitutes for high-fat, natural foods like butter and cheese. I'm not fat because I've been eating sticks of butter; I'm fat because I've been living on a diet of artificial flavors and textures paraded around as "low-cal" and "healthy."