Learning to Cook and Other Things

To the Top 10 Entrecard Droppers of this blog, my sincere appreciation. I hope I am able to return the favor. Thank you all. Sher 29 GFAS 20 Smarter than Grade 5 15 Oh My Gosh 15 My Life at 90 13 Article Specialist 13 Liz Mommy's Little Corner 12 Kveer 10 Spitting Vessel 9 Emila's Illustrated Blog 9

The girl for all status or GFAS has helped this blog tremendously. According to this blog's entrecard stats, my advertisement generated 104 clicks from her blog. To quote Entrecard "The 'Top clicks by widget' table, lists the sites who provided the most clicks over the last 30 days via adverts you ran on their widget. High numbers are good, suggesting that you received many visitors interested in your card, and therefore that the site you bought the advert from did a good job of placing the widget to attract attention." Awesome! Thanks Cherry and Cheers!

I have not been around lately. My time has been consumed with "tweaking my blog templates ( as if) :-) My absence also was due to inaccessibility to a computer. I get to have 'access' at around 11:00 in the evening and by that time I am all exhausted to do my posting. But I am almost back. Thanks to all of you.

Upon the request of GFAS, I am reproducing here the Chicken soup recipe from my Mom. My M om's good old recipe is a real healthy soup because it requires not the commercially bought chicken but rather native poultry which we usually get from the province. Native chicken is poultry raised with out the usual chemical-filled chicken feeds. These are poultry raised in remote provincial backyards, allowe d to roam about, scratch their own food and if at all, fed with mountain corn grown also without the usual pesticides. Yes. Her recipe requires clean and organic ingredients and cooking implements. Tough if you ask me. But that was way, way, way back. Today, it is very difficult to find these healthy attributes from food ingredients. But anyway, if you can source the following, organic, then we're on to a good start. What we need: 1 kilo of Native chicken breast and back (Note that natives are usually not plump, unlike commercially sold poultry. We all know why) 3 organicall

Now that we're through relishing our salads, we will take one step back on our dining experience to quaff off the next item in our meal - the soup. Soup s can be thick and hearty. It may be taken as a snack or served as a light lunch. In non-formal meals, it is usually served first but in formal dining set-ups, it follows the serving of an appetizer. If you ask me, I think most soups usually look plain, and devoid of appeal, unlike salads or appe tizers . But, simple as it is, soups can be made more seductive with the addition of greens as garnish. And talk about flavor -- that is already a given. I believe soups can be called different names. My soup definitions aren't exactly technical but rather, how I understand the terms guided by my limited cooking experience. Soups m ay be bisque because of it's creamy thick texture. It is made of veggie or fish purees. On the other hand it is called a bouillon if it is made out of boiling fish, meat and vegetable in a liquid. In

I have written herb snippets in the past. I guess this would be good as any time to r evisi t these perfumed culinary creations of God. It used to be that herbs were part and parcel of Italian and French cooking. Not anymore. Because today, the world over, herbs have found its niche in haute cuisine as well as ordinary, everyday cooking. Wasn't it said in Genesis 1 , "let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fru it tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so." Herbs especially fresh provide the aroma from coriander, lemon grass, basil, mint, oregano, rosemary which chefs from different continents can't cook without. The zest and the allure of herbs have been there since time immemorial. Italian monks have been known to grow herbs centuries ago. Asian cuis ines would never be the same without lime, curry, sweet basil, or turmeric? And what about Scarborough Fair's parsley, sage, rosemary

I am far from a professional cook nor am I a true blue gardener. So what is the point you ask ? Here it is -- Cooking may well include the pleasure of gardening. So what if you're red thumb-ed and not green? And, so what if you don't have a big yard nor a large garden? What you need are clay pots in different sizes to house your pla nts. Planting vegetables, herbs, fruit trees as well as flowers is not only enjoyable but a wellness activity too. There's a certain delectation in picking, cooking and partaking that which your own hands helped grow. A co uple of years ago, I had plenty of herbs in our backyard. Mint, basil, thyme, rosemary, dill, marjoram and oregano. What I could not use fresh, I dried. Just pick them in the mornings (best time to pick herbs) and dried them using small mesh bags. When dried, I stored them in clean, recycled bottles, sealed tight not waiting for any excuse as to be incorporated in every imaginable dish I prepared. I also have differen