I have always said to people that you would be hard pressed to find another skill that can more thoroughly improve your life than learning to cook. When you sit down to a well prepared meal life's little troubles tend to melt away, the big ones too if only for a few minutes. Cooking itself has a meditative quality to it, to say nothing of how wonderful it is to enjoy your meal. One must eat to live but it is ideal that your meal should improve your life rather than merely sustain it. Food should be as edifying for the soul as it is for the body.

Lost in the Land of the Foggy Glass Doors

Unfortunately there are numerous reason why someone may not have yet learned their way around the stove top. Some people lack the money to buy fresh ingredients. Some simply haven't had the time with kids and work to deal with. Others think they "can't cook" and have spent their lives haunting the local grocer's frozen dinner isle, going home to peel back the plastic and hit "6" on the microwave. The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way! A good meal need not take all night, nor be made of hyper expensive ingredients that can only be found in specialty food stores.

A Gastronomic Guide Appears

For the benefit of these poor souls, and just for the joy of it all, I'm beginning my series of cooking posts titled "Tasty Thingies". This series will focus on meals that are within the reach of the ordinary person who may not have access to exotic ingredients and will aim to teach technique as much as leave you with a recipe. After all, a recipe is just a glorified list. Without the technique to know how to throw it together properly a blueprint for a house just ends up a pile. And so does a meal. When you understand technique you will discover you don't need recipes anymore. You will also have the knowledge to use items which do not stand very well on their own. Anyone can take a great cut of steak and end up with a tender meal, there's no special trick to that. It takes real skill to know how to take ground beef and turn that pile of scraps into something delicious.

So, in the spirit of seeing stomachs full and hearts happy I invite you to come along and investigate the secrets of your kitchen with me.

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