My newest hobby: Cooking!

So I've always somewhat enjoyed cooking, especially over the past year or so (since I've gotten my own kitchen).  I like cooking a huge variety of food, but I'm not quite as skilled as I would like to be, but I'm learning quickly, I think.  So where's a college senior (wow! Senior year already?) to start cooking?  I was never allowed in the kitchen at home in high school, as my mom is (rightfully) particular and protective of her kitchen's cleanliness and plain and simply doesn't enjoy cooking herself.  I really started cooking when my boyfriend showed me how much fun it can actually be.

Now, there's no way I'm going to pretend to be an expert (just like everything else on this blog).  I have a small kitchen in my apartment with all the essentials, but I really don't know how to use most of it to the fullest.  What I've been doing, however, is taking recipes from many different types of food and giving them a shot.  I inherited several Williams Sonoma cookbooks, which are great but use more expensive ingredients and can have pretty complicated techniques.  What I've really done is taken recipes from two main sources: Real Simple magazine and food blogs. 

My favorite food blog is hands down Smitten Kitchen.  There's four years of archives to go through, her recipe index is absolutely wonderful, there's a random button, and she has a huge following.  What makes this following great?  There's hundreds of comments for most recipes.  Even the oldest ones have dozens.  For her spaetzle recipe, there are over 460 comments about how the recipe turned out for the commenter, what different techniques are available if you don't have a spaetzle maker, and a bunch of recipe variations.  When I made my attempt at chicken paprikas (which is a whole other story - good spaetze, flavorless chicken, runny sauce), I used lots of comments to understand the different ways of going about making the noodles.

Hopefully I'll be able to post in the future, and with it being summer, I have much more time to stand in the kitchen and cook something more than a quesadilla.  Maybe some of it will even show up here...