I have been cooking! Those of you who know me well will recognize this as a big accomplishment for me. I used to say I didn't like cooking because I was always so nervous about screwing it up. Well, thanks to only cooking for myself and Andres (a very supportive eater!), I've been able to experiment more and figure out that I really am capable of following and even, gasp!, modifying a recipe.
There are several cooking challenges that I'm trying to navigate right now. Perhaps the biggest is that I am not in my own country and sometimes things that I expect to be two-second purchases at the grocery store turn into hour long endevors and making things from scratch (read: enchilada sauce). Also, my eczema has been giving me trouble so I'm trying to cut out dairy to figure out if a food allergy might be part of the problem. Giving up cheese was much easier than expected (probably because Ecuador has inferior cheese to Minnesota, Wisconsin's neighbor), but finding recipes that don't use any cheese, mayonaise, milk, butter, sour cream, or cream cheese has proved a little bit difficult. Now, I hear some of you protesting "but there's tons of great recipes that don't use dairy!" And that brings me to my last big challenge, which is finding recipes suitable for freezing. Now that I'm teaching two classes during the week with a sub period and starting coordination on Saturdays, I have way less time (and energy) to cook during the week. So I've been investigating freezer cooking so I can cook just once, on Saturday or Sunday, and have yummy nutritious food all week long.
Last Sunday I made minestrone soup, beef and potato casserole, and enchiladas. It's all been yummy, but pretty dairy-heavy. So I'm looking for alternatives for cooking this weekend. Which brings me to the reader participation section of this post! I invite you to share any freezer recipes with low/no dairy that I can try out! I'm waiting with baited breath!
