Dinners at the condo

In an attempt to motivate myself to cook outside my comfort zone, I've started taking pics of Hen's dinners (which are typically the dinners we eat, too) and posting the shots on Flickr. So far, the meals have been pretty sedate - tacos, roasted chicken, pasta - but next week I've got chicken biryani and gyros on the list so hopefully it's working. I'm currently watching Master Chef (on Hulu if anyone else wants to catch a few episodes) and am in awe of folks who can get a couple of ingredients and whip up restaurant quality meals in an hour. That's talent. It proves to me that I am a baker because I'm a recipe person. In the kitchen I'm learning to substitute mostly because I hate having to go to the store a second (or third or fourth) time when I've already started cooking and notice an ingredient missing. This new skill served me very well in the banana recipe I recently tweaked - using two bananas instead of three and plain yogurt instead of buttermilk. We're having some folks over for dinner on Sunday, we haven't hosted a meal in a long time, and I'm pretty happy because I will be doing a lot of cooking. In the past, my role was more of a sous chef and dessert maker. Since we have young palates to satisfy as well as, um, slightly older palates, I making two desserts - pots de creme and lime sherbert with shortbread. We'll list the full menu later on. Cooking is fun, people!