How I Cook

When I'm cooking for myself, I cook mostly vegetarian. It's cheaper and easier, and meat is slimy. I've decided to cook meat only for special occasions, but I'll eat it whenever it's served to me. I sometimes use chicken/beef broth or (rarely) bacon to help flavor an otherwise meatless dish. So I'm not a true vegetarian, but I do a lot of vegetarian cooking.

Since my fridge is so small, I usually make up a big batch of something and eat it for dinner every day until it's gone. The true test of a good recipe is whether I still like it after eating it for a week.

I don't have room in my fridge to keep vegetables unless I have plans to use them. However, I always keep carrot and celery sticks. The carrots I cut up and store in a plastic bag; the celery I cut up and stand in plastic glasses with some water at the bottom of the glass. I often eat two or three heads of celery in a week. Yum.

As for creating recipes, I usually start by reading three or four recipes online for what I want to cook. Then I take the parts I like best of each recipe, and I blend them together. After I finish cooking, if I like it, I write down the recipe so that I can make it again in the future.

I'm learning a lot about cheap meat substitutes. So far I've used dried soybeans, soynuts, and TVP (textured vegetable protein). Soon I'll try my hand at making seitan...