Who’s cleaning this up?

I like to think, as I assume many others do, that I have interests and intrigues that I can use to pass the time. These things I do use to be the side characters to my social life, now they seem to project real main character potential.

Living during these wild times has taught me the power of these little activities in the kitchen. It’s really fun to switch up your normal routine and create some new flavors.

So here are things I’m currently doing and, activities I want to do more off, that are really fulfilling.

Baking or cooking a recipe on a whim

I have a question: Are you feeling whimsical? Because sometimes when I get in a kitchen and start looking online at cooking videos, I get the urge to run to the grocery store.

During a recent episode of this frenzy, I found myself shopping for ingredients for brownies. It was my first time baking something from scratch so I learned things as I went.

The recipe was from a youtube cooking show where every little detail is thought of and all the ingredients are expensive. Despite this, I really had to put away my weird impulse to get the recipe perfectly accurate.

I ended up not getting the espresso powder that was recommended and only buying one type of chocolate when the instructions called for two. This type of thing may seem dumb but the point is you don’t have to be perfect with it.

It’s frustrating starting something new like this. You get all of the things you need home and then get to work destroying the perfect image you had in your head of how the experience would go.

I left the cap off the vanilla and it spilled all over the place. The butter was too cold and wasn’t melting fast enough. What I had to do was calm down and take the trials as they came.

The thing I tell myself in those circumstances is that failure really isn’t that big of a loss in retrospect, it’s just a way to get better.

Starting from the ingredient

When I go out to the grocery or liquor store, I sometimes like to look at unique ingredients that might be challenging or introduce a different flavor into my life.

During the summer I went to the liquor store and found a bottle of sweet vermouth. I had heard of this liquor being used in all the famous cocktails but I had never examined what I could do with vermouth alone.

Turns out vermouth and soda are actually some of the best drinks I have tried in a while. Adding Campari makes the drink an Americano, it’s not as good as the coffee drink though.

There is just a lovely amount of possibilities when you look outside what you would usually appreciate. It takes some courage, especially if you buy something you don’t like. It’s so worth it though.