the kitchen

How I love baking.

It makes me feel at peace and always helps me to forget about my sorrows. Almost nothing else brings me as much happiness as sharing something I made with someone else and watching them enjoy and savor it. I could read food blogs and cookbooks for hours. I spring at the opportunity to make a sweet treat.

I've been wanting to spend more time in the kitchen lately. This may largely be because I live alone, and when I'm working in the kitchen I don't feel lonely. I can have conversations with the recipes and fill my mind with the next steps we'll take together. We build a relationship, we become friends and by the end of it all I don't even care to eat it (maybe just one bite). I just enjoy looking at whatever it is and then excitedly seek out mouths to feed it to.

To start the new year off right, I am going to hone and perfect not only my pastry skills, but cooking in general - which I need (and want) to work on. In order to begin my pursuit, I am buying new kitchen knives and slowly collecting more and more baking necessities (tart pans, cake molds, etc.). These cook books (here* & here) are in the mail and will soon find their way to my front door. And, because both my sister and brother have food allergies - and I think I just might have them too**, I plan to add Gluten-Free Girl's new cookbook and possibly Blackbird Bakery Gluten-Free (which I bought my sister for Christmas) to my collection.

Cooking and baking, however, is not nearly as enjoyable without people to share it with. So, earlier today, while getting overly excited by the food photography and recipes at Cannille et Vanille (what a beautiful blog!) I called up my two younger brothers and announced that we are starting a supper club. I will cook and bake for them a gluten and dairy free meal twice a month and all they must do is eat them. They were both equally enthusiastic about my plans and I am thrilled!

I'll have to buy two more chairs for my teeny tiny dining table.


*I love Emily Luchetti.
**After completing the cleanse I did last week, and reintroducing all of those things back into my diet, I realized that I actually did feel better without some of them. Notably gluten, sugar and dairy. I have suffered from migraines for as long as I can remember, and I have various kinds of headaches 3 to 4 times a week. I didn't experience any headaches at all after the assumed withdrawals wore off. I am not sure whether it can be attributed to the cleanse or not, but I'd really like to finally find out why and where the migraines come from. I booked an appointment with my sister's doctor, who 'fixed' her, to do food allergy testing. Hopefully I'll finally find the root of the problem and put an end to them.