Just Going For It...

This past Friday night my mom and I saw a fabulous movie - "Julie & Julia". LOVED it. Every single bit of it. Meryl Streep absolutely nailed Julia Child's mannerisms and cadence. If you haven't seen it, you should. Immediately.

Two things this film made me really think about: 1) appreciating my husband and 2) setting personal goals.

I know, the first one sounds like a weird idea to come away with from a movie about food, but it's true. I was hit really hard by just how often I take R for granted. You know, he supports me in so many ways and takes such good care of me and I so rarely acknowledge that. Ouch.

Both couples in the movie made their relationships work in good times and in bad. Marriage is "easy" in the good times, but what about when those curve balls are thrown at us??? Do I deal with them appropriately? And do R and I approach challenges as a team or do I shut down and try to deal with everything by myself? Sadly, I can look back and see that's frequently when my "control freak" side comes out and I don't even let R in. Time to change that...

Now, on to the food... and setting personal goals. I loved the fact that Julie set herself a goal that involved something she loved and just went for it. She took something she was passionate about (food) and pursued it completely. She kept going even when things got tough and saw it through to the end.

Which brings me to my own personal goal. No, I am not going to cook my way through Mastering French Cooking, Joy of Cooking or anything like that. This idea came from several places: 1) the movie (obviously), 2) Jeffrey Saad from this season's "Next Food Network Star" (I am still mad he did not win) and 3) my love of travel.

I am going to use (at least) one NEW ingredient each week. It doesn't have to be some exotic or expensive ingredient, just something I have never cooked with before.

So, I started last week with FISH SAUCE. My MeeMaw gave me a subscription to "Cooks Illustrated" magazine about a year ago and in the most recent issue there was a recipe for Thai Pork Lettuce Wraps. Sounded good enough - hey, I like Thai food, it was a healthy recipe and included an ingredient I hadn't used before but was interested in.

Learned some great techniques from the recipe - how to make my own fresh ground meat and the role kao kua (toasted rice powder) plays in building the body of a dish, but didn't really love the finished product. The meat was succulent, just as the recipe promised it would be, but I didn't like the combo of the fish sauce flavor with the pork. That combo completely threw R for a loop - texture was that of ground meat, but flavor of fish...

After cleaning up the kitchen I did a little more research about fish sauce and learned that Pho Mai's egg roll dip (that I just cannot get enough of) is mostly fish sauce! So while the Thai Pork Lettuce Wraps were a bust, I did learn how to make my favorite egg roll sauce at home. Therefore, I would say Week One was a success!

Now, on to ideas for this week ... in honor of Jeffrey, harissa sounds interesting...