Lizzy Cook's Senior Project: Learning to Cook

This week I am learning my family recipes which have been a lot less stressful than last week. I knew little about the art of all the different Asian countries I cooked food from. This week I have been able to lean on my mom and grandfather for help. At the start of the week, I face-timed my grandparents in Flordia. This was a meaningful experience because I was able to share something with my grandfather and I have always wanted to learn the Lebanese food he cooks for our family. When he was a young man he immigrated to the United States from Egypt (he is Lebanese though) and the one thing he brought from his culture was the food. My grandmother grew up in New Jersey and she also has family recipes I learned.  I started out the week with fresh halibut my dad caught on the Oregon coast the day before. I made fish and chips with a fryer. Then on Tuesday, I made molokhia which is a Middle Eastern soup made from jute leaves. On Thursday I made my Grandmother's mac and cheese. On Frida...

This week I have completed the first four days of my journey to challenge my cooking ability. I want to cook because it is a skill I can develop and take with me for the rest of my life. I am going to leave for college in a few months and becoming a better chef seems really valuable for college. To start this week off I have been exploring Asia. I wanted to make Asian food from a different country each week because I love all the Asian grocery stores and restaurants in the Portland area. I knew that this would be a good challenge because of the complex flavor profiles you get from all the Asian cuisines out there. I also figured doing one Asian country each day would provide some nice variety. Pulling together this project has been pretty simple. I try and plan two days in advance and go to the store to get ingredients each day. In a perfect world I would be able to go every other day, but I also seem to forget something. My goals are to m ake a cookbook, develop my technical cooking s...