COOKING PART 2.

Oh, hey there. I didn't see you there because I haven't been on this blog in nearly half a year! You look good, did you get a haircut? You may have. Yeah...cool, cool okay well. Nice to see you again.

With that 100% accurate re-enactment of every time I bump into someone, I'm just going to segue seamlessly into the topic at hand. How to cook, written by someone who doesn't consider themselves good enough to be a food blogger. Or even a blogger really, if we're being honest with each other.

One of my favorite posts back in the day was "Tips on Being an Adult: Cooking", which wasn't really cooking advice as much as tricking people into thinking you can cook. Go look at it. Tips include great bits like "blindly believe in yourself" and "put sriracha in everything you cook." Since then, I think I've gotten better at cooking. Now I can trick people into thinking I can cook well, and with these easy tips, SO CAN YOU!

Let's do this:

• Spices are Cool
• Skip to Tip 4 to see the spices I use most often
• I'll make up a statistic and say 60% of bland meals forgot to salt their food whilst cooking. 
• I imagine you're nodding along, and just lightly laughed to yourself thinking, "Oh, Meghan!"
• Aside from salt & pepper "to taste", try buying other spices! Look at recipes that use those spices for reference of what they taste like/how to use them.
• Add these spices in gradually to whatever you're making, tasting as you go. Layering spices can make some good flavors. Think of the balance between spicy, salty, and sweet.
• Contrasting Temperatures
• At the same time, if you know you're making something sizzling hot and/or spicy, add something cool and bright for contrast. Tzatziki sauce is a good example
• I'm lazy and don't make Tzatziki sauce usually, but if you have a splash of lemon juice and a spoonfull of sour cream, it makes a nice cool dressing to brighten spicy foods.
• Contrasting Texture
• This one is easy. If you like putting chips in your sandwich or eating a Taco Bell Crunchwrap, you get what I mean. 
• Slow cooked meats + Toasty Bread. Croutons in a salad. Just stop eating only soft food or only brittle food (who does that...?) It'll make you feel fancy.
• If you're making a sandwich, adding an apple slice actually accomplishes all 3 tips I just gave.
• When in Doubt, try being Italian
• I'll go on record and say this one is my fall back, because I was raised in an Irish-Italian household which, perhaps to your great surprise, means a lot of Italian cooking. And here's what's fool proof about Italian cooking: 90% of the time, just use these ingredients:
• Garlic, Oregano, Parsley, Basil, Olive Oil+Whatever you're cooking 
• Fresh herbs make it fancy, add tomatoes and you made sauce, add cheese and you made a parmigiano. 
• I like throwing bay leaves all over the place, but that's just me.
• Probably add pasta. Done.

If you aren't instinctively Italian, follow whatever culture you ate the most growing up and it'll probably lead to similar results. Start with what you're familiar with. If you like following recipes, go for it! I prefer just kinda throwing stuff all over the place until there is food, but sometimes I go online to reference different spice combinations.

See you at your next dinner party. 

Idk why, but I usually just add the first Google Image to whatever word comes to mind. This was "Food."