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HC Abroad: Iron Chef, London Style

Hello Collegiettes!

I am currently having marvelous adventures in Spain and Italy and probably eating way better food than I will EVER cook but I thought I would take a minute to talk about cooking!

I’ll be the first to admit that I am…not the best cook. Don’t get me wrong, I can do breakfast things (cereal, oatmeal, eggs, etc) but other than that my skills are or were rather limited. However, I happened to pick right in the boyfriend department and he happens to be the most amazing cook to grace this planet! My school also happens to cater to people like me who, when faced of the daunting task of having to survive on the food that they make themselves, offered a cooking class and then gave us a free and easy cookbook to use while abroad.

I undertook this new adventure the way I undertake every new adventure: with extreme caution. Not only was there one hundred and one ways to mess everything up, but I also could potentially set the house on fire. No problem, right? I approached my boyfriend super excited that we could take on this new adventure together because not only did I have great directions but he knew what he was doing and would absolutely not let me burn down the house. I brought the cookbook home and proudly presented it to my boyfriend and we decided to make a rather elaborate dinner in which we would each cook something on our own, more so to test my skills than anything.

In our cooking class our ‘teacher’ had made Mexican spoon bread, lemon chicken and homemade brownies. However, we altered the menu to include pazookies instead (which are hot, fresh chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream). We rushed out to the grocery store to gather the ingredients and began my first real adventure in cooking. My job was to make the Mexican spoon bread.

And it actually turned out great! And the house was not burned down, thank you very much.

And I really enjoyed the whole process of cooking, especially with the boyfriend!

Anyways, the moral of this blog post is that I have learned to cook and to cook for a large group. I’m on a study abroad program where we have to provide all our own food and cook it without killing not only ourselves, but others. And it’s wonderful to taste everyone’s recipes from home or trying new recipes and hoping for the best, but overall it is just super entertaining. We sit down like a big family around the table and make sure everyone has enough to eat and then sometimes, while we are cooking dinner, we listen to music and turn the kitchen into a club! It’s very entertaining business.

I think that this cooking adventure is shaping my whole experience. And I’m going to come back such a better cook.

So I’m still on spring break, who knows which country by now, but when I return you all should look forward to wonderful, amazing stories and pictures!

Cheers!

Paige