What a weird time to be alive.
What a great time to learn how to cook.
Welcome to The Quarantine Cooking Club.
Sitting around all day while you’re self-isolating is hungry work. If you’re like me, you’d like to make a bunch of really great food but you’re sorta limited by the fact that, well, you’re not a really great cook. That shouldn’t keep you from trying, though!
For the longest time, I hated cooking because nothing I ever did turned out the way it looked in the cookbook or the youtube video or whatever. And I never had all the right ingredients (and I didn’t want to pay for the really obscure ones that only came in giant containers when I only needed like a pinch). And I’m not great with a knife (they terrify me and my only marketable skills involved a keyboard, so I’d like to keep all my fingers, please) so my technique is… rough. If at first your dough doesn’t rise properly, try try again — and take notes!
There are plenty of places online to find recipes and tips and videos. This is not that. I’ve found those sites rarely talk about what to do when things don’t go according to plan, so these are the notes from failure and triumphs, hopefully shedding some light on what to try next when you don’t nail it on the first attempt.