Cooking again!

It has been along time sense I have wanted to cook, but the other day I decided that today was the day. I cooked a big pot full of stuffed grape leaves. They came out really good. They are super time consuming and involved but once the prep is over it is just a matter of rolling to the stuffing in the grape leaves. I like to sit and watch the news while I'm rolling them. I think about how the people in 3rd world countries must have rolled cigars and how cramped there fingers must have gotten. Once when we were in Turkey I bought this automatic grape leaf roller from the Turkish equivalent of an Infomercial. The Guy was in the Suk ( market) all set up with an over the head microphone ( the kind Madonna used to wear), a table, and piles of rolled grape leaves next to him. He was speaking in Turkish and I could only imagine what he was saying. Anyway he would slap the grape leave in the contraption, throw some stuffing on top and pull this lever that looked like the thruster on an airplane and wallah a nice tight perfectly rolled grape leaf. It took him a minuter to make 37 leaves. I had this idea that I could make the leaves really fast and spend the rest of the day in front of the T.V. eating BON-BONS. When My hubby came home I could throw on a dirty apron and pretend that I spent all day cooking the great meal just for him. LOL It Didn't work!! The thing would roll 2 leaves really nicely and then I would have to wipe it clean and it would just go down hill from there. The moral of the story is " if the locals aren't buying it, you shouldn't either. !!!

Here is the first step. soaking the grape leaves in boiling water.



The Stuffing


Nicly packed in the pot



All done