I’ve never been one to really cook.  Or bake.  Or do anything right in the kitchen.  I’m ashamed to tell people that – yes – I did burn rice once.  Usually people laugh and wonder how that can be done when I was making it in a rice cooker?  Simply stated, I didn’t put enough water.  Since then, I have resorted to the filipino/hawaiian way of measuring whether there is enough water in the rice (dip your finger till your finger tip just touches the rice and if the water just reaches over the first line on the finger) and I haven’t failed since!

In high school, I loved baking.  I never made anything from scratch, it always came from a box – that way it was idiot (angela) proof.  One Christmas, I was low on the funds, but I wanted to do something nice for all my friends, so I decided to bake.  My mom took me to Costco and bought me a bag of mini pretzels that was big enough to feed a small army (but at $4, a very good deal), some blocks of chocolate, sugar cookie mix, and bags of hershey’s kisses and mini reeses peanut butter cups.  I made the sugar cookies with no problem (all I had to do was add water to the mix, but still!!  I felt like Betty Crocker!), and when they came right out of the oven, my mom and my sister Cathrine helped me press the kisses and peanut butter cups into the middle.  Our first batch actually came out kinda messy – as we were pushing the chocolate in, they started to melt all over the cookies (my dad and my brother happily ate these little mishaps, not caring too much about the appearance).  My mom suggested I keep the candy refrigerated and once the cookies came out of the oven, to press them in as quickly as possible – it worked like a charm on the next batch.

I should’ve stopped there, but I was really looking forward to dipping the pretzels in chocolate <~you will never hear me utter that phrase ever again.  What a disaster!  I’m serious, that bag of pretzels (mini pretzels, mind you!) was about 4 lbs, and I ruined about half of that.  The chocolate kept burning in the pot (now I know that i should’ve placed the chocolate in a pot, and placed that pot in another pot filled with water, or I should’ve removed the chocolate from the stove when it was just about melted, or….there’s a million things I should have done, but didn’t know at the time).  I was also having a heck of a time with the pretzels inside the chocolate – I know I lost a few here and there inside the chocolate – I have no clue where they went. 

I ended up with enough cookies, but not nearly enough chocolate dipped pretzels to be able to fill the cute Christmas tins I purchased for my friends.  I didn’t even have extra candy to be able to fill up the space in those tins, otherwise it would’ve come out super cute!  I was counting on the exorbitant amount of home made chocolate dipped pretzels I was going to end up with, but alas, that was not meant to be.

I ended up giving my friends the goodies the very next day at school, but I was still grumpy about the whole fiasco and kept apologizing about the cruddy Christmas gift.  They accepted them happily, so that cheered me up a little bit.  I vowed from that day, though, that I would never bake or cook again.

Fast forward to the present day…

On Sunday, when all my IL’s were at our condo, I had decided to make a yummy artichoke dip.  This comes from the recipe files of one of the 4 greatest cooks I’ve ever known – my OTT.  I’m talking about my older sister – I call her Ott because the word for older sister in our language is “Ate” (pronounce it ahh-teh).  The other fabulous cooks I am referring to are my mom, my MIL, and my Lola (my grandmother).  My grandmother and my mom’s are super talented at cooking all the filipino food, but Ott is something else.  She has recipes for these dishes that we weren’t used to having while growing up.  You should try her bruschetta style spaghetti…or her potato tacos…her lemon bars!!  Everything she makes is so good…but this artichoke dip she makes is so simple that I thought I would give it a shot, especially since it’s so good.

Well, after making a huge batch of it on Sunday (I served it with toasted pieces of a french baguette) and seeing it gone after about 10 minutes, I was really happy that it came out so well.  I even added a little bit of jalapeño this time to give it a little kick, because I know DH likes spicy stuff, and so does his dad.  Well anyway, I was talking online to JR yesterday, and he was saying that their dad really liked the dip and wanted more.  He said he liked the spiciness of it (score!!) and that he asked my MIL to make it.  They were at Costco and she was asking what kind of bread it was that I used, and I let him know what it was and that I got all the ingredients (except the jalapeños) at Trader Joe’s.  It was flattering to hear that one of my dishes came out good.  Finally!  I never make anything good!  DH will disagree though – he loves my chicken and cheese enchiladas, fish tacos, and Arrozcaldo (that’s his favorite – but i use only chicken breast and ginger, nothing else).

I can’t wait for the day that my Ott finally hooks me up with all her recipes that she’s been promising to get to me (*hint hint* – I know you’re reading this, hehe).  I look forward to trying them out on all my unsuspecting – I mean, all my lovely – family. 

I think I may get the hang of this whole “wife” thing, after all!

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. – Harriet Van Horne