PastaAMT's Profile

1. As far as what to make I suggest you start with something that you like to eat anyway. You must be eating something so what do you order in or order when you do out? Look at your favorite dishes and pick one of them to learn.
2. Ask a friend who is a good cook to help you learn one go to everyday meal and one impress a date meal. I did this for friends back in college and helped several of my friends come up with a few basics that they could make.
3. If those ideas fail you start with eggs. Seriously scrambling eggs, making an omelet, making a fritata, poaching an egg, baked eggs, hard or soft boiled eggs, are all basic instantly rewarding kitchen skills that are cheap and not a huge expense if you mess up. They are also very any meal friendly.
4. Buy kitchen tools(actually all tools) as you have the need for them. No need to go out and buy stuff you will never use.
5. That said the following ten items are essential 1)chef knife 2) paring knife 3) cutting board 4) cast iron skillet 5) big pasta pot 6) small saucepan 7) metal mixing bowl 8) silicone spatula 9) tongs 10) colander Get those 10 items and let the rest go until you have need of them. I use each of those ten items pretty much every single day and each can be used in multiple ways.
6. Do not be intimidated by the recipes you see here and on food blogs and foodie magazines. Yes people cook and eat like that but that is often the most interesting dish made that week.
7. Learn good basic foods that you like to eat and taste as you go along do not be afraid to try new seasonings as well when just cooking for yourself worst case hey you did not like it and learnt something new. In particular play with herbs, spices, salt. A pot or plot with herbs growing will make playing with herbs a lot cheaper
8. Have delicious fun. It seems scary but just learn one dish and then enjoy that and learn another and enjoy that and before you know it you will be the friend your friends come to for recipe and food advice.

I think one thing about food blogs and sites like the Kitchen is that on some level they make it seem so hard to cook. It sometimes seems like fancy dinners smashing lovely cocktails ect makes up the everyday food of everybody. This is at times very intimidating. So getting say your editor , one of your authors, and a few of the well known food bloggers to take pictures of what they actually ate for a week would make it seem more approachable. I always assume that you are like me and eat some combo of fancy stuff and plain stuff. So show us that you eat more then just the inspirational cooking and do things like eat a fried egg, toast, coffee for breakfast not just the greuyer asparagus and ramps tart type foods.

Made mustache cookies with nutella frosting on them for a cinco de mayo party. Them need to do a vegetarian boat nibbles for sunday sailing.

Any dessert sauce, caramel, berry, chocolate would be lovely
How about inverting the whole idea and doing the cheesecake as a layer cake. So that you do two smaller cheesecakes with a layer of flavor in between and an extra graham cracker crust layer on top and use that as a platform for pipping with more cheesecake filling on the top for the letters and decor.

I find potlucks more stressful. You worry about what people are bringing and if say the person who wants to bring appetizers is always the tardy guest. A simple meal dinner party is less stress to me at least .

What is your favorite hobby?What about it do you love?
Favorite Movie and why?

Cooking is not as hard as a lot of people(media) makes it sound. It does not always need to be super fancy and learning a few techniques and great food is fast sometimes even faster then takeout. Plus so much cheaper and more relaxed to have friends over for dinner then to go out to eat. For the price of one persons dinner you can have a ton of people over for dinner and drinks.

The problem with the tart or really any food that requires a plate fork and knife is that sitting with a plate on your lap eating with a fork and knife is a mess waiting to happen.

Exactly, Relax and have fun. If you have fun your guests have fun, nobody starves and nobody gets hurt then hey you just had a great dinner party.
People stress too much about the perfect for the want of the good enough.

In my house the house rule is kids are welcome till 8pm. So a daytime party sure. A party that runs late I expect the kids gone about 8.