My adventures with food started getting a whole lot more exciting.
Not only was I experimenting with new recipes to make dinner more delicious, but I also found myself exploring more upscale restaurants—eager to satisfy my newly awakened taste buds.
That’s the funny thing about making shifts in life: you can never go back, but the path ahead is rarely clear.
I didn’t know exactly where this new culinary curiosity would take me—especially since my role-model mom wasn’t exactly known for cooking from scratch. But something in me sensed that a great big food adventure was unfolding.
My eyes—and my taste buds—were wide open and ready for more.
Naturally, I started buying cookbooks. A lot of them:
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The New York Times Cook Book by Craig Claiborne (still my all-time favorite)
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The New Basics Cookbook by Julie Rosso & Sheila Lukins
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The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham
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Betty Crocker’s New Chinese Cookbook by Leeann Chin
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Hors d’Oeuvres by Martha Stewart
Each one taught me something different. One gave me consistently good recipes that always worked. Another gave me insider knowledge on food and cookware. And one of them? It gave me a kick-ass pancake recipe I still use to this day.
Over the next few years, I picked out recipes, gave them a go, and learned basic cooking techniques through good old-fashioned trial and error.
I even started writing little notes in the margins—things like “very good,” “add more garlic,” or “use haddock instead.” It became my personal cooking journal.
Slowly but surely, I started becoming a not-so-bad cook.
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