Potato carrot kugel

I made potato carrot kugel last week. I probably should have used a smaller pan to bake it. It was less than an inch thick in a 9x13" dish.



The dish smelled good, but it wasn't especially tasty. The preparation also involves a fair bit of grating, which can be a problem if you don't have a food processor.

Mince garlic

I learned how to mince a clove of garlic tonight. This step is especially satisfying:

Separate the cloves quickly by placing the garlic bulb root-side down on a cutting board and pressing down on it firmly with the heel of your hand until it separates.

Watch your knuckles

Within 12 hours of resolving to learn cooking, I'm waiting for my first dish to come out of the oven. I made the potato carrot kugel from the new Laurel's Kitchen. I took a bunch of photos, which I'll post tomorrow. It's 1:30 in the morning, and I'm exhausted. I imagine that this cooking thing will go more quickly once I master a few basic techniques. TIP: watch you knuckles when grating vegetables.

I'm hungry.

Reasons (nutrition is a dangerous fiction)

I don't know how to cook. My mother never cooked. I grew up on frozen food, and that's what I live on at 30 years of age. I'm fat. I'm not happy about it, but I can change.

I have lost significant amounts of weight before, but not kept them off. I realize that I need to change the way I eat, and my relationship to food. Eating is about health, and health isn't something that only needs to last as long as a weight loss diet.

I read Michael Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, in the New York Times. It's a longish article that Pollan summarizes with the words: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." He makes a fairly strong argument that the contemporary concept of nutrition is a dangerous fiction.

Pollan's article pushed me to action. I'm not even going to worry about loosing weight. I'm just going to learn how to cook, and cook mainly healthy things. Mostly plants.