Dessert : It's What's for Dinner.

So evidently there exists a process whereby food products are combined in various physical, thermal, and chemical ways to produce something called a "meal." My previous attitude toward cooking was similar to my one toward car maintenance, which was "I could probably be good at it, but why bother?" Since getting into Permaculture and wanting to lower my living expenses, I've become more sanguine to the idea. In the past, I've been a fairly decent suicide cook who could throw things together to make something that was usually palatable and occasionally fairly tasty. I have a certain degree of limited local fame for my creme brulee, despite my last batch being not quite up-to-snuff. To help things along, I got a copy of The New Best Recipe, a book in which the cooks and tasters of America's Kitchen exhaustively tried between 8 and 50 different recipes for each of the 1000 items, and nailed down which recipes and techniques they considered the absolute (or relative) best. They include the details of each quest, so you can see what they tried, realize your mother was wrong, etc. Not bad for $23 new on Amazon. Thanks to Adam and Gwen for turning me on to it. My first attempt at being fabulous was their panna cotta with berry coulis, which turned out pretty well:



So far everyone (including me) has been very impressed, and I've gotten one "This is the best dessert I've ever had."

It's a start.