philosophy and cooking

There's very little that puts me off cooking faster than coming across a recipe I think I'd really like, and then discovering that I either haven't got half of the ingredients or I can't get one of the major ingredients here. Japanese recipes that call for dashi, Korean recipes that call for mirin, Indian recipes that call for cardamom...life was easier when I didn't have to think so hard about whether I could afford to go grocery shopping twice in the same week.

I finally did find oyster sauce (last week), so now I'm debating whether I'm going to make broccoli and oyster sauce for dinner tonight, or whether I want pasta instead. I've wanted to make polenta for ages now, too. Hmm. The problem with polenta is that eating it by itself isn't terribly exciting, and I don't know what I'd put with it.

Sometimes I wonder at the stuff I eat. As long as I'm only cooking for myself, I don't particularly care whether the rice I made could have used another couple of minutes cooking, or whether I overcooked the broccoli, or anything of that nature. Rare steak is fine with me. On the other hand, if I was cooking for anyone else, I'd be mortified, and if I got a meal in a restaurant that had that sort of problem, I'd send it back. I haven't ever cooked anything for myself that turned out completely inedible, but I tend to give myself more leeway than I would if I were cooking for other people. It's a strange sort of double standard.

Well, at least I haven't made myself sick with my own cooking, and as far as I know, I haven't made anyone else sick either.