Welcome to Gaia! ::

I guess I will go first. So a little thing about me, I cook on a boat. Well this one time, we were in the magical waters of Maine, which, if you don't know anything about Maine, is that there is almost always around 11ft. waves. So we were rocking around pretty good, and the EO decided, lets do a drill. There I was, in our tiny kitchen, cooking lunch for just about 100 people, and they announce, torpedo evasion. Meaning basically, everyone run out of the kitchen but me, and lunch was all up to me. One man. One meal. An hour. Could I do it?

Well, when we do torpedo evasion drills, you can imagine how the boat rocks when we are doing hard turns in 11 ft. waves, so things were flying across the galley, and I was getting mad because nothing was staying in place, and I really had to pee, but couldn't. That, and one of our oven doors was going rogue, opening and closing randomly (it clipped me pretty good on the arm, 2nd degree burn), and they secured water, so I couldn't steam the vegetables. So there I was, holding cookies so they wouldn't kill themselves by falling all over the place, this oven door clattering open and close, and me swearing loudly at ever roll we took, water literally trickling into a pitcher, and me catching the soup pot luckily so it wouldn't kill me. Luckily, when we secured, the rest of the cooks came back, and all that needed to be done was the vegetables. And I got to go to bed after that, because I had the graveyard meal that night.

One day I was thinking about how bad I wanted to make a quiche, but had no way of making pastry, (nor had I ever made a quiche in the first place) I'm sitting there looking at my counter, I noticed I had some potatoes that needed to be used up before long... light bulb! I looked up recipes for a potato crusted quiche, and all the ones I found required shredded potato, which my shredder has bin M.I.A. for some time now, so I sliced the potato very thinly and made a layer at the bottom and sides of the pan, baked them till they were just beginning to crisp, like 20-30 mins, then I added my egg mixture and tomatoes, caramelized onion, and some leftover roasted chicken, baked it another 30 mins till the egg was cooked and once my hubby tried it he was HOOKED! lol I now get a request for this once a week. By far my best experiment cooking-wise to date. 4laugh

Always pay attention to the food's cooking time. If cannot time it mentally, find some kind of timer with an alarm.

That must have tasted interesting! xd You will get it next time. Just have fun when you decide to cook again. What is the point of cooking for those you love and yourself when do you do not enjoy the process to make the dish itself?

What is the oddest combination of ingredients that you have tried? 🐀

I guess my biggest adventure was being unable to eat meat after I got into my 20s? I'm not sure if this sounds like a physical issue or not but when I turned 19 I started having stomach pains and cramps every time I had beef, pork, ground meat, any type of meat really. For a few years the only thing I could eat that didn't cause it was chicken (so long as it wasn't fried) if it was fried tho or had any butter or extra fat it caused me massive amounts of pain. Once a week I had baked chicken till I was around 27 or so. After that I stopped eating actual meat and switched to those frozen patty things from a local store. They were not actual meat (like 40% and mostly soy) so they didn't bother me as much, or at all really, the sandwiches I would make out of them were great till the pandemic hit. Those unfortunately were the first to go, and I couldn't afford or eat real meat, so I switched to being vegetarian entirely. That was 9months ago and I feel so much better, no pain, no sick feeling, and I've lost almost 60 pounds too!

Sounds like you enjoy hot spicy food 🐀

That sounds fun. Though personally I can’t handle hot spices. I did try making a recipe for Chilies Sauce. I made it for someone I know who likes his food just as you say you do, hot. It was a challenge as the fumes burned my eyes and nose. He said it was good. If you’d like I can post it. 🐀