Chef Margot

When Bryan and I were first married I wasn't much of a cook. I can remember wandering into the kitchen and saying, "I'm hungry. Should we have ramen or macaroni and cheese?" This happened almost every night that Bryan didn't cook. If I hadn't been married, I think I would have graduated from college severely malnourished.

Oh what a difference a few years make. I've been working on it for a while, and I still have misses, but my cooking hits are coming faster and faster these days.

On Monday I decided I wanted Fettucine Alfredo for dinner. Problem: I had neither heavy nor light cream in the house. And because I decided on this meal at about four in the afternoon, I was too low on energy to wrangle the boys into the car and run to the store. Lucky me, I know how to use the internet. I found a substitute for heavy cream (1/3 cup butter and 3/4 cup milk) here. Score. When I looked at my recipe I realized that it called for shallots. Hmmm, another problem. Thankfully the internet swooped in and saved the day with this (2/3 teaspoon onion plus 1/3 teaspoon garlic) substitution. The final product? Delicious. Granted, it was more buttery than creamy, but it worked in a pinch. And Peter and Cooper both enjoyed it, which is a win in my book.

I've become so comfortable in the kitchen that I asked for a food processor for Christmas. Some women scoff at such practicality, demanding jewelry instead. I say, give me something I can use and I will be a happy girl. My wish was granted. And it's so pretty.


I love it. I'm a terribly slow chopper so this has cut down my dinner prep-time significantly. And it's really sturdy, I don't feel like I'm going to break it. In twenty minutes I cut all the vegetables for that night's soup and the next night's homemade spaghetti sauce. Two meals and six kinds of veggies: twenty minutes! The boys tend to go crazy while I'm fixing dinner (a situation that occurs in many homes), so speed is usually the name of the game. I sound like a commercial. Oh well. I really love my food processor.

My newest kitchen gadget arrived yesterday.

I've never used a pressure-cooker before, so mostly I'm hoping to not blow anything up. Bryan told some of his coworkers that he bought me a pressure-cooker as a gift and they were shocked. Isn't that like giving your wife a vacuum or a treadmill? (Both of which are awesome gifts, in my opinion) No, he told them, his wife was a really good cook, so she would enjoy it.

Good answer.