Aloha! I'm super psyched to tell you guys about a new joint blog feature called Kitchen Pals!
A little background before I dive into the deets: To put it simply, I can't cook. Friends have kindly tried to teach me over the years but I'm a bit of a disaster in the kitchen. Burnt Pots. Fire Trucks. Soured Fondue. It's one calamity after the next.
See, I come from a family of grazers. Healthy, gym-going grazers. But I can't bare raw nuts and the like! So I tend to eat a lot of processed junk. 'Tis no good, I know.
But I am determined to cook once and for all. And I'll tell you who inspired me to officially challenge myself before the year is up.
I was recently reading
Siân's blog and I thought, 'Heck, if this girl can cook these amazing meals with a handful of ingredients picked from her veggie garden in Zimbabwe, I can muster up a meal with store-bought stuff!'
Siân used to live in Johannesburg where she owned a successful boutique catering company called the Pink Kitchen. As fate would have it, she's since moved to Zimbabwe for love! I read with intrigue how the grocery store is miles away from Siân's country home and that even when she does visit the store, she can't buy much because the ingredients are so expensive. The Zim currency has gone bananas! So Siân's been making scrummy homemade meals with just a handful of ingredients - many of 'em picked from her own garden. In Siân's words:
"I love knocking up quick, healthy, yummy food. I bake bread nearly every day and we eat out of our veggie garden."
Wholesome and delicious - sounds good to me!
I wrote to Siân and told her how she'd inspired me to give cooking one more bash. I asked her how she'd feel about sharing one recipe with me per week and she kindly obliged to help me out of culinary ruin! Once a week, I'll blog my attempt at cooking one of Siân's recipes, and if time and internet permits, she'll blog her (profesh!) version too.
We're aiming to do it for eight weeks but we'll see how we go. I'm so chuffed to have made a Kitchen Pen Pal in Siân! And it's kind of serendipitous that we're the same age and living in Africa. We both love a good shopping sesh too!
I was also wondering how you guys would feel about having a Kitchen Pen Pal? It could be fun to hook up people in different countries, or even provinces. Let me know your thoughts if you'd like to partake in something like this. Maybe we can all blog our cooking escapades once a month, or if you have time, once a week like Siân and me. There needn't be any hard and fast rules. I could link us all up and create a little blog badge of sorts. These are just some thoughts...feel free to weigh in! I'll blog my first recipe
from Siân next week. And
all her recipes will be the sort of dish that you can whip after work with a couple of items bought from a regular grocery store. I can't wait to begin! x
PS: Excuse ridic posed pic of me! Only one that would fit in that area. (I don't cook with sunnies on. Promise.)
