Cooking Advice from the Foley's Chef

I never cooked a whole lot before I got married.  I was, however, good at making cookie dough.  I was also good at flipping pancakes.  Needless to say, I didn’t have much experience.

Since this time, I have started to actually like cooking.  Maybe having to do this every day without getting bored deludes me into thinking it is fun.  I’m not sure, but either way—I have learned a lot about cooking things in the past 4 months.  Here are some of my findings:

• If you’re trying to make mashed potatoes, you should chop up the potatoes instead of trying to boil them whole.  Unless you have about 4 hours to kill or are going for a crunchy-texture.  Don’t be tricked into thinking that if you mash crunchy potatoes enough, they’ll become soft.  Because they won’t.
• Some spices are inherently gross.  Just because they’re called for in a fancy recipe, don’t think that the taste of the spice will suddenly be good. 
• Sometimes you should use the Restaurant Rule which states, “If you cannot see this dish being served at a restaurant, that means it is probably bad.”  Specifically, recipes that claim that you can mix dishes/ingredients from different nationalities should be a red flag.  There is a reason why few restaurants serve things like “enchilada pasta.” *I made up the Restaurant Rule, in case you are wondering.
• Avoid any recipes involving 1 T of pepper.  Surprise: it will be spicy.
• Homemade bread bowls are a lot more work than they are worth.  For crying out loud, just make some regular rolls and dip them in your soup.  I know it’s not as cool as carving a bowl out of carbohydrates, but it tastes better and will give you time to do things more exciting than babysitting chunks of dough.  Plus, one bread bowl is like eating a full loaf of bread.  Too much.
• Crock Pots recipes are almost always safe to try.  Be wary of actually turning the crock pot on when you leave for work.
• Soups are surprisingly not that hard to make.  If they call for large portions of cheese, they are guaranteed to be delicious.  I recommend broccoli-cheese or Wisconsin cauliflower varieties.
• If you try to make homemade bread sticks, be careful not to roll them too flat or they’ll end up as tortilla chips.
• You can make stuffed crust pizza by putting some string cheese in your dough.  So easy.
• Fresh spinach shrinks like 50 fold when you cook it.  Just in case you wanted to know.
• Try to cook a ton of new things before your husband has any expectation of your cooking skills.  Then you have a good excuse if things take a nasty turn.