Culinary Arts (and saving money)

Day 4

Having visit and hosting is something I truly enjoy.  Ever since I moved to Miami, friends and family have been constantly visiting and many times I invite them to stay at home and make their stay the best as possible.  

Depending on the visitor, sometimes I just have to worry about having breakfast items: bread, eggs, juice, milk, cheese and such because they will spend most of the day outside and probably have lunch/dinner out.  On the other hand, there are also the ones whom I have to worry about what they will eat throughout the day, e.g., my nephew, because I cannot afford the luxury of eating out every single day.

Thankfully and forcefully, moving out of my parents made me develop certain survival skills like cooking.  You can imagine, in the Dominican Republic is very common for families to have someone at home working on managing the house: cooking, cleaning, organization, laundry, etc.  In my particular case, we had (and still have) Bombón, the greatest cook in the world.  She would do anything a Dominican family would need so I never had the need to learn how to cook.

At the time I moved, I barely had any money in my pocket: I was a full-time international student and because of that I could work ONLY for the university and ONLY part-time during regular semesters (in summer they allowed full-time) and at minimum wage.  Money was short and eating out was out of the equation so cooking at home was the way to go, which in itself was a big challenge. 

How do you cook is you only know how to do a sandwich on a toaster?  Let me tell you, hunger works magic in situations like this.  I'm not implying that I was starving or anything, but ramen soups can only get you so far, and when all your life you were mostly used to Dominican cuisine, not having that was a major issue that had to be solved, hence my diving into survival cooking.

15 long years have passed, and I can say I do enjoy cooking every now and then, but there's a caveat: I only know how to cook with a recipe in hand.  I realized a few years ago that I was amazing at following recipes but not only that, but also at figuring out which one would be a tasty one prior cooking.  So, with that minor skill mastered, I've been able to cook some very elaborate dishes like "Habichuelas con Dulce" or like bake a pie every Pi Day.

So present day, and putting all together, having my nephew around, that eats like a fucking T-Rex after a hunger strike, I've been in the kitchen a bit more than usual these past few days due to cost saving measures, considering also that I have additional visitors at home.  

You never know how useful some skills might be 😅

Tonight "invention": baked mashed potatoes


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