What I like to do with my time off.

Do you like my new apron? It was a Christmas gift. It makes me feel so fancy, even though all I'm doing is making dinner.

I love cooking. I loving picking out recipes, shopping for ingredients, and with me, the high risk of everything turning out horribly disastrous. I grew up on frozen dinners and mac and cheese, so being able to make really awesome food is quite startling and innovative to me. Slowly, I've gained confidence (and kitchen gizmos) and cooking relaxes and focuses me, and since I don't have a family I have to cook for, it's a fun pastime for me. Tonight's goal was to find something I could cook in this:

It's my new bean pot, also a Christmas gift. It's droll. I think it needs a name, but I haven't thought of one yet. Alas, the recipe I chose was a wee bit too big to fit in my new friend, but don't fret, I have this beauty:

I got it at Home Goods, it's Le Creuset and I got a sweet sweet deal. I found it while Christmas shopping. Don't you hate that? The best deals are at Christmas, but you can't buy things for yourself. Well, this was a deal I couldn't pass up, so I didn't. And you should go out and get yourself one because they're just so pretty. I digress. Can you guess what I decided to make? I started like this:

Then, brought out this for later:

No guesses? How about now:

I needed goggles for this. I decided to make french onion soup. It's cold and windy, and soup is just the right thing to do. I got the recipe from The Pioneer Woman, I just used vegetable broth instead of beef and chicken. I don't cook with meat at home. I'm not vegetarian, but my roommate is, and I can't eat all this food I like to make by myself. Besides, the animals thank me, and I don't feel like I'm missing anything, there's a ton of creative alternatives for recipes. I've fooled a few people. "Mwahaha, gotcha, you thought that was meat, oh no my friend, you were fooled!" Then I twirl my mustache. Okay, that may not really happen. Back to soup!

Can you smell the onions as they reduce to a yummy, sweet mixture of buttery goodness?

Add some broth, garlic, worcestershire (the vegetarian version if you love in my house) and simmer until you can't stand waiting any longer.

Slave over a hot oven, baking crusty french bread. Or buy it at the grocery store. Whatever. Then butter and toast the heck out of it. Why wouldn't you?

Then throw the bread on top of your soup, slather everything with cheese like you were brought up with some sense, melt it and enjoy. If you have cute stoneware bowls from the state fair that you like to make little pot pies in, even better! For the complete, sensical recipe, go here.

Now, the recipe didn't explicitly say to do this, but I thought these were the perfect compliment to all my hard (ish) work.

This recipe is here.