I made sweet potato and miso soup yesterday, with popped wild rice and Caesar salad on the side. W- made garlic bread with the baguette I bought. It was yummy. The other day, I helped make butternut squash and sweet potato soup at Hacklab, and that was well-received as well. Yay!

Five years ago, before we discovered bulk cooking and bought a chest freezer, W- used to cook every 1-2 days. I didn't know a lot of dishes that I could confidently cook and he was so much better at cooking than I was, so I was the sous chef. I helped prepare ingredients, make rice, and cook simple recipes. He'd come home early to make dinner, and we packed leftovers for lunch the next day.

Now I cook most of our experimental meals, trying new recipes in the search for future favourites. I also enjoy refilling the chest freezer with time-tested meals like chicken curry and shake-and-bake chicken. Our next goal is to work out a good rotation of known favourites, sprinkling in new recipes here and there.

It feels great to be able to cook–and to take charge of the kitchen, which is an interesting experience. I'm usually trying recipes for the first time, or experimenting with a new variant of a recipe that we've had before. I'm never quite sure how it will work out, but since we have backups (hooray for leftovers and low expectations!), it's okay to stretch and learn. Besides, with all these years ahead of me (probably), the more exploration I do now, the more it will pay off in terms of skills and knowledge.

So probably every Tuesday or so, I'll be learning a new recipe (helping out at Hacklab). Two or three times a week, I'll also try a new recipe at home – maybe Wednesday and Sunday, or something like that. I'm also working on rediscovering old favourites and writing them down in the shared Evernote notebook I've set up with W-, and maybe transitioning to a grocery/recipe system I'm building for the two of us.

Nice to have a kitchen and the time to cook! =)