All the planning and prep is over and I’m finally in it. I spent all last week learning how to cook burritos: tortillas from scratch, mexican beans and rice, pico de gallo, salsa verde, salsa roja, and guac.
I also scraped every book from the library that had the word ‘cooking’ in it.
The week started rough with my tortillas coming out way too crumbly and not even tasty. I eventually figured out that when a recipe calls for AP flour, it is not fine to swap out fresh milled whole wheat flour. Once I got that sorted my tortillas were great and I turned my attention to salsas and pico.
Now, my primary goal with cooking is to be able to cook tasty food for other people without being super stressed about it. Perhaps the most important principle of ultralearning is Directness, that is, to learn by doing the actual thing you want to get good at.
So I arranged to spend all weekend cooking for other people. I made dinner burritos and brunch sourdough pancakes for my friends (family of four) and then made an oil-free vegan version for my parents.
I am Jack’s Sourdough Discard Pancakes
Since I’d been practicing the dishes all week, and because I made a plan in advance, I wasn’t stressed at all. Not everything went perfectly - my salsa verde texture was off because I didn’t roast the tomatillos and I couldn’t quite get the pico to nip the way I wanted it do, but overall the meals were good enough.
I read/studied less than I had planned on. I attempted to, but my eyes started to glaze over. I think the issue is that my reading wasn’t synchronized with what I was actually cooking. I was trying to nail salsa but I was reading about the science of soufflés.
The adjustment to make there, I think, is to
Decide what to cook
Read about what I have decided to cook
I realize this isn’t exactly a stroke of sheer brilliance, but my tendency is to read books from the beginning to the end. This week I’ll try using the books (and internet) as a reference to dig into the details of what I’m actually trying to do.
Week 2 is The Art of the Omelete and ‘How to take random, inexpensive, and common ingredients most people will have and make something tasty out of it.’ I’m trying to simulate being airdropped into someone else’s house with no plan and no time to go to the grocery store.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that I didn’t have a Meal Plan for week 2 the last time I was in town and so all I’ve got to cook with is what’s in my deep pantry and rando leftovers from Week 1.