Is It Possible To Make A Healthy Cookie That Doesn't Suck?

You're all probably thinking that my answer is an unequivocal yes here, but the jury's still out. Fool around with whole-wheat flour for a few days and you, too, will learn that there's a trade off for making things brown. Whole-wheat flour is more dense and will turn even the most delicate of cookie recipes into a scone-like consistency. And I don't mean that in a good way.

My first experiment was an adaptation of a vegan recipe. Vegans, however, don't eat chocolate, since it generally has milk in it, so they supplant chocolate chips with carob chips. That's going too far, even for me, so I used the recipe with real chocolate chips. Three cups of whole-wheat flour (this seemed like a lot; I should have known better) goes into a mixing bowl with a teaspoon of baking powder. Wet ingredients, which included unsweetened applesauce (one cup), agave nectar (one cup), and vanilla extract (two teaspoons) were mixed separately and then integrated into the dry. I used my hands to create the dough and used my hands again to incorporate one cup of chocolate chips and one cup of chopped walnuts.

Wheat flour prevents cookies from spreading, so if you don't spread them by hand (and stupidly, I didn't), what you get is a brown exterior and a play-doughy, undercooked interior. I know that this is more the dough, which seemed too chewy even when I dropped it onto the cookie sheet. I threw the whole batch away.

Pluses of this baking disaster? The batter contains no eggs, which means that you can eat it without fear of contracting salmonella. Also, the dearth of creamable wet ingredients makes this a stand mixer-free recipe, so if you have no dishwasher (yours truly), you'll have fewer things to wash.

Minuses: even if you are a dough-eater, like me, you wouldn't want to eat this gummy concoction. And the cookies were inedible. Truly.

Round two. I decided to adapt the recipe on the back of the Toll House package for healthier purposes. Instead of a combination of white and brown sugars, I used dark agave nectar. Agave nectar is roughly twice as sweet as regular sugar. You have to cream the butter together (yes, in a stand mixer) with butter. Recipe calls for two sticks (otherwise known as 16 tablespoons), so I used 16 tablespoons of Smart Balance, a low-cholesterol butter substitute that very much resembles butter. Smart Balance is salted so I skipped the teaspoon of salt with the dry ingredients. I'm not sure whether or not that was wise. I don't think, however, that salt has anything to do with the leavening properties of baking powder.

Because the agave nectar isn't granulated like sugar, the butter and nectar don't cream together quite right. Oh well. I add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and two eggs anyway. To that, I slowly beat in the dry ingredients that I have mixed on the side: a one-to-one ratio of wheat flour to white flour (two and a quarter cups total) and one teaspoon of baking powder. The dough that forms looks and tastes more like a normal cookie dough. I add the chocolate chips (one cup) and walnuts (one cup) by hand.

I notice, after a few minutes in a 375 degree oven that, once again, the cookies aren't spreading. I guess a cup and an eighth of wheat flour goes a long way. I decided to pull the cookies out and flatten them with the back of a spoon. This worked a little better, but the chips on top got all mangled so that, by the end, they looked more like chocolate chunk cookies than the pictures on the front of the Toll House bag.

They are still a bit doughy on the inside but a vast improvement over my previous attempt at veganism. And by my rough calculations, they come to a paltry 120 calories a pop, worth it if they're yummy and completely not worth it if they suck.

I think my conclusion is this: if you're looking to make pastry healthier, don't. Either eat them or don't, both at your own peril. But making bad cookies is way worse than not making cookies at all.

Martha, Martha, Martha

I ripped a recipe out of my mother's Martha Stewart Living over the weekend for experimental purposes.  The recipe was for a chicken, leek, and mushroom casserole, Martha's take on the traditional Campbell's recipe termed loosely as 'chicken with canned cream of mushroom soup.'  Last night, I attempted to modify the recipe to see what would happened.  

Part of my goal in modifying the dish was to make it less unhealthy.  The other part of my goal was to make the dish suitable for one person as opposed to six, which is hard to do with a casserole.  

I did not exactly cut the recipe in half.  The recipe called for a pound and a third of chicken breasts; I had a freezer-burned package of chicken breasts that I'd been avoiding using.  The whole package weighed a pound (two double-paned breasts).  I used one double breast, at about eight ounces, less than the recipe called for.  I seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper and cooked it in a frying pan with a tablespoon of olive oil until it was brown on both sides and cooked through.  I then sliced the chicken and put to the side. 

Next, I sauteed one leek, one rib of celery, and a package of cremini mushrooms (eight ounces, though the recipe called for ten) in olive oil with a little kosher salt.  About ten minutes later, when the mushrooms had released their water and the leek and celery were tooth-tender, I added one and a half tablespoons of flour.  Here's where it gets tricky. 

The recipe, of course, called for all purpose white flour.  I decided, however, to try my luck with a brown flour from the health food store.  I knew that this switch had a high potential for failure.  The purpose of the flour in the recipe is to thicken the mixture.  First you sprinkle the flour over the vegetables, cook it off for a few minutes, and then add the liquid: a few tablespoons of dry sherry, a cup and a quarter of chicken stock, a cup and a quarter of milk (whole substituted with skim).  And a bay leaf.  As with gravy, the mixture should develop a thick, condensed consistency within a few minutes on the heat.  But the brown flour didn't want to thicken the sauce and instead grew grainy.  I had to rely on simple reduction as a thickening aid, but by the time the sauce was of a consistency that pleased me, it had reduced by well over half. 

Next, Martha called for eight pieces of multi-grain bread, crusts removed, as the liner for an oval baking dish.  I actually like the way the crusts cook up, like in bread pudding, so I left them on.  And I used three slices rather than eight, or even four, because over the course of two meals no one really needs to eat that much bread.  I spooned half of the veggies over the bread and topped them with all of the sliced chicken.  I topped this with the rest of the veggies and sauce and sprinkled parmesan cheese and fresh parsley on top.  

The casserole, however, looked dry, so I decided to moisten it with an extra half cup of chicken stock before putting it into a 350 degree oven, where I left it heat for 20 more minutes. 

As far as the final product is concerned, it actually tasted amazing, more like a Thanksgiving stuffing with the chicken folded right in than an adaptation of cream of mushroom soup.  I was right to leave the crusts on the bread; they offered superb texture.  I'm sure the reason the meal was less thick and gooey and more moist and stuffing-like had a lot to do with the flour debacle, but I actually preferred it.  Which isn't to say I'm right, but I wouldn't call the experiment a failure, either.  

The chicken, I will admit, was past its prime, though, like any Jewish woman, I would have felt terribly guilty disposing of a package of chicken regardless of how long it had spent in my freezer.  In the future, maybe I'll make such untasty frozen packages into sausage, where you can't tell how long they've been hanging around unnoticed.  

Another Lesson In Cooking For One

I went back to the fish markets yesterday, despite the nasty weather.  I did not return to the market that sold me the fishy scallops.  It should be noted that when buying fresh seafood one unsatisfactory product does not necessarily speak poorly of the place (sometimes the fish just isn't good), but Astoria teems with options, so I explored mine.  

Actually, the fish market I went to had fillets of tuna already wrapped in cellophane for easy purchase.  The fillets were large--nine to ten ounces apiece--and they were also exactly what one looks for in a piece of tuna.  They were pinkish red with no discoloration and the sign said they had been caught that day.  

These things are important when it comes to tuna in particular, because most people don't cook tuna all the way through.  If you're going to buy it for your own use, then, you have to make sure the product is really top rate.  

I stopped by my favorite vegetable stand for some scallions and green beans.  Back home, I combined a few tablespoons of sesame oil, soy sauce, wasabi, pickled ginger, ground ginger, sesame seeds, fresh lime juice, some baby bok choy, and one sliced scallion in a tupperware container.  If you're wondering why I keep wasabi and pickled ginger in my house, well, I don't.  I saved the leftover wasabi balls and condiments from the previous night's sushi, figuring I'd use it eventually.  

I cut my tuna steak in half (the recommended portion size for a piece of tuna is four to six ounces) and coated it with the marinade with my hands.  I then put the fish in the tupperware, closed it, and left it in the refrigerator for the rest of the day.  

Which meant that, hours later, when I returned from a rigorous workout at the gym, the fish was ready to go.  I heated a frying pan and wilted the bok choy for a few minutes before getting the fish on the heat.  On a very high flame, I seared both steaks, one minute on each side.  I ate the steak over brown rice with green beans that I had steamed.  For extra flavor, I added tamari to my rice.  

For me, tuna is the perfect substitute for a grilled steak.  It is substantial in a way that some fragile white fish are not and it offers a comparable mouthfeel to meat.  Seared rare, it's almost as good as a rib eye.  Almost.  

The fish was very fresh and the bright, spicy marinade proved the perfect counterpoint for dense the meat.  Perhaps the best part is that last night's leftovers will be today's lunch, not bad for seven bucks at the local fish market. 

Something Fishy

It's been a while since I delved into project 'find decent sushi in Astoria,' so I decided to try my hand once more.  I noticed from their online menu that Sakura Sushi on Ditmars had a more substantial selection of sashimi than its Astorian brothers.  Sakura it was. 

1. Sakura was not as inexpensive as Watawa Sushi or Go Wasabi, both of which had supplied average sushi in the past.  One vegetarian roll (in this case, asparagus with brown rice), five sashimi selections, and a clear soup came to $20, and it didn't come to what I would consider an abundance of food.  

2. Sashimi was fresh.  I was happy that they offered a different selection of fishes.  I ordered red snapper, which I rarely see on sushi takeout menus.  I also ordered yellowtail, which was simply average, sea scallops (came with the welcome addition of black caviar), small sweet shrimp, and large sweet shrimp.  The real bonus here was that the large shrimp came with one deep-fried shrimp head, one of my favorite Japanese treats.  

3. Delivery took just over 30 minutes, a totally reasonable wait considering the distance between Ditmars and here.  

4. They sent me a complimentary Diet Coke.  Diet!  My favorite!  

5. I leafed through the rest of the menu and found more variety than I usually find in my standard udon/sushi/tempura Japanese menus.  

All in all, I'd be more likely to order from Sakura again than I would from Go Wasabi, where I'm convinced they keep their "fresh" fish for days at a time.  Not a bad option for a neighborhood afflicted with a serious case of Bad Asian Foodism.  

*

Sakura 

35-15 Ditmars Boulevard

Astoria, NY 11105

718.777.2188

Apres Ski

Really, the only thing I wanted to eat after yesterday's ski trip to Attitash Mountain was (you guessed it!) pizza. But due to a number of circumstances, including, but not limited to, my best friend's craving for a 'decent' glass of pinot noir, we ended up at the Barking Dog Bar and Grill, a medium-sized pub in downtown Amesbury, Massachusetts.

Places like this are best suited for no-fuss-no-muss classics, like hamburgers and macaroni and cheese and decadently unhealthy sub sandwiches. I wasn't really looking to eat any of those things, so I sifted through the seafood options. Blackened seafood with pasta. Mediterranean seafood with pasta. Seafood Provencal with pasta. Grilled salmon (I hate salmon; I don't care how good it is for you). Blah, blah, blah.

What I did end up ordering was a grilled seafood plate, replete with grilled (and gummy) sea scallops, grilled shrimp, and grilled tuna. The tuna was overcooked at medium and the salad of 'wilted greens,' really no more than mesclun and roasted red peppers, overwhelmed an already overburdened serving. I ate the tuna and the shrimp and left the rest for the garbage-eaters.

My best friend fared better with her appetizer of kielbasa, which arrived atop flatbread triangles with spicy mustard on the side. The plate, however, was too big for one person. Outside of metropolitan New York, American portion sizes seem designed to feed a family of four rather than one normal human being. The kielbasa was juicy and flavorful, as expected. I was glad to snack on her leftovers.

She ordered salmon for her entree, which I wouldn't have eaten on a dare. She seemed pleased enough, though I noted, once more, that the fillet exceeded ten ounces and sat atop a sprawling spread of potatoes and roasted vegetables that could have sated even the hungriest skier.

I guess even in damaged economic times excess is still the American way.

*

Barking Dog Bar and Grill
21 Friend Street
Amesbury, MA 01913
978.388.9537

The Morning After

My new approach to eating, which involves few refined sugars/carbohydrates, lots of lean proteins and vegetables, and a sprinkling of whole grains, was kind of a dicey undertaking in preparing for my first 09 half-marathon. Note to new athletes: it is never a good idea to make drastic changes to one's diet before an important race. But part of this was experimental; I knew, running yesterday's race, that it would be unlikely that I would beat my own half-marathon personal record of 1:57:45 (Brooklyn Half, April 2007, pace/mile 8:59), not because I was incapable of doing so but, rather, because I had run that race after months and months of rigorous training.

But I only returned to running in early December, after a posterior tibial stress fracture had me casted and grounded for two full months. Recovery to superfitness seemed difficult at best.

I did change the way I went about my workouts and I also integrated much more weight training this time around, as a preventative measure against future bone issues. And then I changed my diet.

I can't tell you how many books have been written telling runners to eat white things--bagels, breads, pastas, etc.--before and after a run. I did a little of that, born more of necessity than anything else (sometimes you just have to eat what other people want to eat). Mostly, though, I tried to cut refined sugars from my diet. I got whole-wheat everything and replaced the sugar on my grapefruit with agave nectar. I felt less hungry all the time, a side effect of the 30+ mile a week runner's regimen. I also felt stronger during my workouts, a change noted by my pilates instructor who, after three years, noticed the most dramatic change in my strength in the past month.

Then there was yesterday. My one mistake during yesterday's race was that I waited too long to eat my fuel gel. I didn't feel the wall coming until mile eight, and by then my body was likely already depleted. In future races, I'll eat my gels an hour in, before the fatigue starts to hit. But, after only two months' training (let it be states that I have participated in competetive running events since 2005), I completed the race with a final time of 2:04:05, a pace/mile of 9:28. Of eight half-marathons, this was my third fastest finish. And I stopped to use the restroom at mile six, which cost me two minutes. My pace/mile was probably something closer to 9:20.

In short, it is my athletic opinion that the reduction and/or elimination of refined sugars and carbohydrates from one's diet contributes to overall improvement in athletic ability. My next half-marathon is February 8, at which I do, in fact, hope to break that record of 1:57:45. Time will tell.

Carb Loading, II

I'm old enough to remember when the space on 8th Street and 5th Avenue was a swanky bar called Clementine; they probably served me one of my first underage New York beverages.  I'm also old enough to remember a time before Mario Batali and a time before everyone south of the Hudson and east of Queens knew what Otto was and wanted to eat there on a Saturday night.  

That reality no longer exists, which means if you choose to go out to dinner in the west village on a Saturday night you are, consequently, choosing to dine with the crowd that the industry affectionately terms "bridge and tunnel," the imports from, well, outside of the City.  I'll say no more. 

Last night was certainly an exercise in B and T lovin'.  We waited an hour and fifteen minutes for our table, but at Otto, that's considered a short wait.  In the meantime, I had my one allotted alcoholic beverage (the definite downside to racing on Sunday mornings), a blood orange bellini.  We ordered a cheese plate and a meat plate to munch on while we waited.  Meats included bresaola, proscuitto, sopressata, coppa, and something that resembled headcheese, to which I have an insurmountable aversion.  Cheeses included Coach Farms triple cream goat (Batali keeps it in the family; his wife is the heir to the Coach fortune, known for their bags and domestic goat cheese), a parmesan, a mild ricotta, a gorgonzola dolce, and a fifth cheese that was never identified.  Otto serves their cheese plate with some of my favorite goodies: black truffle honey, brandied cherries, spicy sweet apricots.

When we did sit, food was fast and furious.  Spaghetti carbonara was just as decadent and evil as its meant to be.  A dish of penne, mascarpone, tomatoes, and eggplant was simultaneously delicate and rich.  Rigatoni with ground sausage reminded me of a better-executed rigatoni dish at Batali's Lupa on Thompson, but nevermind.  The penne with butternut squash and... butter made up for it.  

Pizza's are Naples-style, which means small and crispy, just my style.  Margheritas came with patches of fresh mozzarella and wide, healthy basil leaves.  Pepperoni looked better than anything Ray's ever served.  The pieces are so small and light they go down a stitch too easily.  

But wait!  There's more!  By far Otto's greatest contribution to the culinary world is their heavenly olive oil gelato.  This stuff is amazing on its own, but this time I indulged in the olive oil coppetta, gelato topped with a fennel brittle, fresh blood orange, and lime curd.  The gelato is remarkably fruity and one of my favorite things about this vast and crazy island. 

The other desserts were good but a bit too sweet for my personal palate.  Caramel coppetta combined caramel gelato, brownies, whipped cream, and candied pecans.  The black and white offered up a mousse-like chocolate gelato with chocolate chips and whipped cream.  Like all good New York restaurants, Otto changes their desserts with the seasons.  Right now, you can find huckleberry and Meyer lemon gelato a la carte, as well as a brilliantly colored blood orange sorbet.  

I'd forgotten how much I'd missed this place.  I'll be heading back soon, though probably not on a Saturday. 

*

Otto Enoteca and Pizzeria

1 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10003

212.995.9559

Carb Loading, I

Countdown to the first half-marathon of 2009, which forgives the pizza addiction, because all good runners should overdo the carbohydrates before a race.  Tonight will be a carb-loading sesh as well, but I'll get to that tomorrow. 

Yesterday afternoon I headed to Carroll Gardens for a run with a friend and to visit said friend's husband, who recently had ankle surgery and is immobile.  Immobile, drugged up, but still hungry.  Around six, he announced that he wanted pizza.  If I'd brought my car, rather than making the trek via F train, I would have driven to the bridge and picked up a Grimaldi's pie.  Alas, no car.  According to my friends, the pizza in CG is ubiquitously "fine," with the exception of two exceptional places, neither of which deliver.  So we settled for fine.  

"Fine" came in the form of a very large pie from Francesco's on Henry Street.  Here are some details: the slices themselves were, true to form, real NY slices, cut big, pizzeria style; the cheese was ample; the crust and underbelly were not crisp enough for my liking; the peppers and onions (on half) were fresh though I didn't try the spinach/onion half; the sauce was nothing more than decent.  

All in all, the pizza gets a B.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm being hard on delivery.  Most of the time, pizza is crispiest right out of the oven and this baby was probably no exception.  I think the steamy nature of the pizza-warming bag changes the structure of the pizza, so maybe it's hard to get a good sense of how good the pie is from a delivery environment.  

I will tell you this: I am a big fan of the oversized slice and I was happy to see a solid pie arrive with more than the fast food pizza joint's anemic little slices.  So all was not lost. 

* 

Francesco's

531 Henry Street

Brooklyn, NY 11231

718.834.0863

Prehistoric Thursday

I weathered a one-and-a-half-hour wait for bar-b-cue last night.  This isn't the longest I've ever waited for food; once, at The Spotted Pig, I stood around for four hours, consuming more than my share of beer by the pint, in an attempt to experience Fergus Henderson's cuisine first-hand.  By the time I sat, I was a little too drunk to appreciate fully the organ meat extravaganza that was Henderson's cooking.  

So maybe the wait wasn't the worst, though it wasn't particularly pleasant.  One redeeming aspect was that Dinosaur Bar-B-Cue, an import from Syracuse that opened in 2004 on 131st Street, serves rich and foamy Sprecher's root beer on tap, perfect for passing the hours. 

When we finally arrived at our table, we shouted orders at our poor waitress in under ten seconds.  Chicken wings were spicy and sweet and undeniably meaty, served with celery sticks and a blue cheese dressing.  While they would never satisfy a Buffalo wing craving, itself its own beast, the wings did chicken justice.  Fried green tomatoes came sheathed in a light breading and served with fresh grated parmesan and a remoulade for dipping.  Peel and eat shrimp were cajun inflected, medium-sized, and cold, avoiding the finger burning too often associated with the dish.  

And then there was the meat.  For my part, I ordered all three house specialties, the trifecta of Texas brisket, pork shoulder (generally referred to as pork butt), and ribs.  Ribs were dry rubbed first and then glazed with sauce and had ample flavor.  Pork butt was fatty and delicious, though it required an additional serving of sauce for flavor.  Brisket, served with pickled jalapenos, was almost burnt on those coveted edges. 

Macaroni and cheese arrived creamy and browned on top, smelling of paprika.  An iceburg wedge salad with blue cheese hit all the familiar steakhouse notes.  Baked BBQ beans were a tad watery for my taste, but still sweet and savory and full of pork.  Fried rice reminded me of Chinese takeout, in a good way.  

Then, of course, came the requisite southern dessert, banana pudding.  Vanilla pudding, fresh bananas, and canned whipped cream sat beneath one large, delicate sugar cookie.  Diets, take leave.  This ain't the place for calorie-counting.  

*

Dinosaur  Bar-B-Cue

646 W. 131st Street

New York, NY 10027

212.694.1777

Wedding Gift

My cousin, who would never by any stretch of the imagination consider herself a foodie and who does not, for all intents and purposes, enjoy cooking, is getting married.  She's getting married to a man who kinda cooks but neither one of them feels this pull towards the kitchen the way I do.  They don't like getting their hands dirty. 

I decided that part of my wedding gift to my cousin would be cooking lessons.  She could choose the dish and I would teach her easy techniques, how to cook without recipes, and how to work with what you have.  I actually chose the first dish because I knew it would be something she'd like and because I knew we'd need a little advance preparation for lesson one.  

I chose chicken parm.  But part of my goal here is to turn ordinary dishes into really good dishes and, as an extension of that, to make empirically unhealthy dishes very healthy.  So the first thing I made her do was make breadcrumbs.  By hand. 

I wouldn't have made her crush the crumbs by hand if she'd had a food processor, but she didn't.  So, instead, I told her to toast four pieces of whole-wheat bread to deep brown, a firm toast.  She removed them from the oven and broke them into crumbs with her hands.  We mixed that wheat crumb mixture with a quarter cup of fresh grated parmesan cheese, good old Italian seasoning from the bottle, salt, and pepper.  

She said, "We have tons of tomato sauce in the cabinet."  I said, "You're going to learn to make your own."  I showed her how to chop a shallot and how to bruise garlic with the back of a knife.  I added a tablespoon of olive oil to the bottom of a saucepan and sweated the two down.  "This is what they are supposed to look like," I told her.  

"Clear?" she asked. 

Exactly. 

Next up, two large cans of peeled Italian tomatoes, salt, pepper, wine (I brought a Chianti), a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, a tiny bit of sugar (I would have used agave nectar, had I thought better of it), fresh basil, and fresh oregano.  They had no bay leaves so I skipped the step.  I left the pot uncovered.  She asked if the sauce was supposed to be shrinking.  I said that was exactly what I wanted it to do. 

We bought a head of broccoli.  She had never cooked fresh broccoli before.  "Break off the florets," I told her.  "Put them on a baking dish."  Her engagement gift spice rack of filled spices gave us chili powder, coriander seeds, and cumin.  She covered the broccoli with, admittedly, a little too much olive oil.  I sprinkled the spices on top.  

I told her to separate three eggs.  She knew how to do this.  We seasoned the egg whites and dipped the chicken breasts in them.  The breasts went from egg to breadcrumbs to baking pan and into a 350 degree oven along with the broccoli. 

"You're going to make your own salad dressing," I told her.  She scooped a teaspoon of dijon mustard into a bowl and added a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar.  

"Give me the whisk," I said.  

"I don't have one," she told me.  

"I'm looking at one," I said.  

"Oh.  I didn't know we had that."  

I taught her to emulsify.  "Pour while I whisk," I said.  "The mustard helps bind the oil to the vinegar to the oil, since vinegar and oil constantly want to separate."  I added salt and pepper and put the dressing to the side. 

Next up, garlic toasts.  I minced four cloves of garlic and heated them in a saucepan with a few turns of olive oil and three tablespoons of a low-cholesterol butter spread the had in the house (good for consistency and only 50 calories per tablespoon).  I added a chiffonade of basil and oregano.  When the mixture was just short of a simmer, I took it off the heat and spooned it over three split whole-wheat English muffins,  and put the muffins inside the toaster.  

Thirty minutes into cooking time on the chicken, I removed the trays, topped the breast with thinly sliced fresh mozzarella, basil leaves, oregano leaves, and an ample helping of the tomato sauce.  I returned the chicken to the oven to melt and continue cooking.  

We served the chicken parm, which, by the way, tasted unhealthy enough, with whole-wheat pasta, our garlic toasts, a simple salad, and the roasted broccoli.  Both my cousin and her fiance seemed amazed that we had conquered it all on our own without screwing up.  My cousin was particularly impressed with my refusal to go by any book or recipe.  I told her that all you need is a general understanding of how things work and you can succeed in the kitchen.  

But the real problem was that she viewed the product of cooking--the actual meal--as the point, and I don't abide by that philosophy.  For me, the trip to the market, the creative process, the time getting my hands dirty, these are all therapeutic elements in and of themselves.  I enjoy the whole process of cooking, from start to finish.  I like knowing that I can be inspired by produce at a grocery store and that cooking doesn't always mean being armed with an ingredient list or a list of instructions.  

I was hoping that bringing her in touch with her food would inspire in her a new desire to want to cook, to want to create things that she could be proud of.  And she did take pride in the accomplishment of the completed meal.  I'm still hoping that the result of this ongoing project will be an increased drive to get her hands dirty, to love food a little more than she currently does.  On that point, the jury is still out.  Stay tuned.