It's a good start

I have been trying to pay more attention to things I cook and how I cook them so I can possibly remember for the future without having to rely on a recipe. Of course, when I cook, its kind of like when I use GPS, I rely fully on the recipe and cannot tell you how I got to the end result unless I am holding that little piece of paper in my hand. (Jennifer, you know what I mean! You can't drive around Dallas without your near and dear GPS even though you've been there a million times!) So today I will begin writing what I cook everyday in a little journal along with whatever Soner cooks as he has a knack for these things, doesn't use a recipe AND his meals are ALWAYS wonderful. Last night we had chicken salads and Soner prepared the chicken. He mixed olive oil, soy sauce, minced ginger and chicken seasoning together and the chicken tasted great. I would have never put those things together. To prepare chicken, I would put olive oil and a bunch of spices hoping it would come out decent and it never does. The chicken always tastes like chicken, exactly how it smells when you take it out raw,..not like something I want to enjoy and savor.

So I was talking to mom last night and she asked something to the effect of if we were staying in very much and cooking. OF COURSE! I cook every single day during the week and let me tell you, the first week, it was not easy trying to figure out what to cook for dinner so I could impress Soner with my great cooking skills and rely only on the oven and microwave to cook and saute things with only a cookie sheet and broiler pan for the oven, some steak knives and the 2 sets of forks and knives I stole from the hotel. It would've been great if we could've just left and gone out for dinner (actually I was getting really tired of having to read the menus in French and take 20 minutes to order something that was not as delightful and what I thought it would be). Since we have upgraded our cooking utensils since then with our great big shipment from Turkey, we are now a fully equiped wonderful kitchen! Yippee. I love it. So anyway, below are some pictures of some of the foods I have made.. a cake (it was a box mix! but I had to read it all in french and I added my own twist to it..I tried making a Boston Creme Pie but the store did not have instant pudding like it called for and I did not have a pot to cook the pudding, only a mixing bowl so I had to go with a ready to eat pudding in a container and the recipe called for semisweet chocolate to melt but yet again I could not find melting chocolate but did find a wonderful little chocolate in a microwavable pouch that could be melted. So I baked my cake, froze it in the freezer (Thanks Mom!), cut it across the middle and voila, I had space for my ready to eat pudding to go then I topped the top with my great microwavable melting chocolate and tada! a somewhat terrible Boston Creme Pie was born!...it wasn't that terrible but my melting chocolate hardened after it cooled and the pudding could have been a little thicker)
This is grilled eggplant, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and basil stacked on top of each other with a balsamic vinegar sauce. Not exactly a difficult recipe but it was still very good and healthy.
This is steak topped with tomatoes, peppers and onion (part of the left over "salsa" I had made earlier) with rice and a phyllo dough pouch I filled with tomatoes, asparagus and cheese. (Ha, this little pouch was a very exciting accomplishment for me! It was probably one of the first times, I tried to think what would be good together and made it without a recipe telling me how..not exactly since it only has 3 ingredients but exciting for me nonetheless!)
This last photo is of the brunch Soner made for us. He was trying to put together a creamy shrimp fondue of sorts like the appetizer you can get from Cheesecake Bistro. I think it turned out better than the one at Cheesecake Bistro. He used shrimp, cream, milk, cheeses and some spices. I am amazed everyday how creative he is and how he can figure out how to put these things together so they work. He is like people who play an instrument, they can hear the song once and be able to play it from ear exactly.