becoming julia child

so i may have already told you this, but a while back, i realized the problem with me cooking is that i never could decide what to cook. i used to arrive home after work and stare into the freezer trying to decide if defrosting meat would be worth it, and what would i do with it anyway once it was ready to cook. for a couple of months, i've been picking out several recipes before each grocery trip and buying the ingredients so that i know exactly what i'll be cooking over the next week or so. this has worked out rather nicely. i have subscriptions to both cooking light magazine and real simple, and own several cookbooks, along with the box full of recipes i got at my bridal showers.

i have always liked to cook, but i feel like i'm on my way to becoming the next julia child. i really got into this past season of top chef on bravo, and even asked bryan to get me a gift certificate to sur la table for christmas, where you can go do various cooking classes. and now, i get excited about cooking the recipes i've selected.

for example, on sunday night i made sirloin steak with tarragon-garlic sour cream, over pan fried potatoes. it was pretty good, if i do say so myself. then monday, i drooled the whole bus ride home over my planned menu: homemade chicken pot pie. and honies, it did not disappoint! in fact, i ate so much felt sick. :)

of course, my excellent cooking skills are periodically interrupted during the week, as bryan and i are both addicted to chipotle, and we must have it at least once a week. plus we do tend to eat out a fair bit on the weekends in particular. but i went to the grocery store on wednesday and have big plans for french onion soup, pork chops with tomato-sage pan sauce, mahi mahi with a citrus ponzu sauce and chicken enchiladas with salsa verde. (the enchiladas give me a chance to make my guacamole, which i must say is pretty good!)

also, i used my gift certificate to sur la table and signed up for a 3-part cooking essentials series. i figure it will be nice to have a professional cook show me how i'm supposed to be cooking this stuff, and then i can move on to culinary divinity from there. :) those classes start march 8 and run three thursdays in a row. i am very excited!!

you'd think from this blog that i'm hungry right now, but the opposite is true. in the past two days i've eaten way too much (my coworkers and i went to a great italian restaurant for lunch yesterday to get out of the office). but with all those recipes waiting to be cooked, i think a lot about what sort of masterpiece i can create in the kitchen next! :)