I can cook stuff

So I'm really not a chef. I'm more like the Anti-Chef in human form - recipes fall under my eyes and burst into flames. I think my interest in Top Cheffery went out the window with my Northampton food opuses of durian nog (not even rum and a bottle of nutmeg and cinammon will cover up the taste of durian sufficiently to make it palatable or potable - and this exercise should reassure anyone durians were intended to be used solely as weapons):

...Durian cake (hey, once you've consumed a few nogs' worth of rum and nutmeg, all kinds of things sound like good ideas):

... and the brown-rice-flour-gluten-free-sugar-free-steva-"snickerdoodles" (my attorney advises against releasing documentation of these due to pending litigation) - sweets that molded over by the time they reached their intended recipient, probably saving her from a certain death or at least a lot of gagging involved in trying to actually consume them. Twice a year I am gifted with some pretty fabulous sous-chefery, but only so that I can make the traditional Thanksgiving tofu pie and Christmas Babooti, but this doesn't count: vegetarians ruin all kinds of american traditions, and my participaton in the flouting of americana partakes of Anti-Cheffery.

Still making my own food goes hand in hand with my brief flirtation with keeping my food budget down. What I've learned is that making food actually can be pretty simple. I have yet to follow an actual recipe and so I can't say that my dishes are particularly sophisticated, but they really suit my tastes rather well. More importantly I've got it down to a basic formula:

Food = [a grain (rice, quinoa, barley) + a legume/bean (the usual array) + a protein (tofu, grillers, seitan...) + as many vegetables as I happen to have stored and preprepared (this virtually always includes cabbage, onions, carrots, broccoli, peppers, and spinach) + spices] * some form of heating (microwave, saucepan, frying pan, open flame that resulted from my mistakenly putting on the wrong burner and igniting whatever junk was on this burner... mmm charred textbook).

The liquidity of the dish varies, depending on whether I opten to use a soup for either my beans or vegetables (usually both), and how much I decided to use. It ranges from full on soup to light sauce.

I have about two or three preferred flavor profiles (yes, I totally ripped that off from Top Chef and have no clue what it actually means, but it makes me sound fancy): 1. Cayenne and Chili powder, which go with everything, but particularly well with beans, eggs, veggies and onions; 2. Dashes of Cinnamon with Oregano and Basil, which I like particularly with butternut squash and corn based soups 3. craploads of garlic with pepper and maybe turmeric.

The nice thing about this formula is that I can usually buy both grains and legume/beans in dehydrated form, cook up one serving of a grain and one of a bean and be set for the week. I'm particularly pleased with quinoa, which takes virtually no time to cook and lasts for at least a few weeks. Also, raw vegetables cook up so nicely and last a surprisingly long time with the right storage.

And yes, I'm inordinately proud of myself for managing something many people learned by the time they were eleven. Mostly, I'm just proud because the kitchen has yet to be burnt down and nobody has had to be rushed to the hospital. I consider this a glaring sucess.