Cooking Difficulty

It's amazing what people consider to be hard to make... Rob and I are making chicken tikka masala for dinner. It takes some time to make and requires some planning, but is it difficult? I don't think so. In fact, I'm beginning to realize that when people say something isn't easy to make, it often only means that it takes awhile to make... and now with "30 minute meals," most things will start to be too complicated!

This makes me wonder... what is hard to make? Baking can definitely be a challenge. You stir a few too many times and your cupcakes (not from a box) take on a mild resemblance to corn bread. It doesn't take long to burn something, and from there it's not a huge leap to burning the house down. Ok, now I'm rambling.

I guess my point is... people should start saying they don't have time, or usually the patience/desire to cook. Following a recipe really shouldn't be that difficult, even if it's for something with a lot of chopping, long periods of simmering, etc. Cooking isn't hard (in my opinion); it's just time consuming.

Actually, one thing that was a bit "hard" was making Egyptian food from a cookbook from Egypt. There were many references to foods I didn't recognize, but more importantly, there were very few measurements! Even if you do cook a fair amount, it required either being familiar with Egyptian food or at least having an idea of how all the foods/spices would combine. It was a bit of a challenge picking out a recipe, because I'm not familiar with Egyptian food at all... yet.

Why was I making Egyptian food? No, not in preparation for my trip to Egypt (yay! can't wait!) I had coincidentally picked an Egyptian author's book for our last book club. I had read an interview of the author in National Geographic, and I thought it was a book worth reading. The Yacoubian Building has been the number one best selling book in the Middle East for a couple of years. I thought it might be neat to read in a book club in the States. Oh - and the food (imam biyaldi - an eggplant/beef dish) was pretty tasty.