My friend Anya likes to cook. Indeed, she’s quite good at it and is a regular practitioner. We often chat about the various things we are up to in the kitchen, and one day recently she confessed that she didn’t feel that she was adventurous enough in her cooking; she felt that she should try more things.
Experimenting with new things in the kitchen is a fun thing to do, but it’s very easy to get stuck in a culinary rut, especially when you work all day and then have to rush home and rustle up something for dinner – we’ve all been there. So, we came up with a plan. I would set a series of challenges for Anya. Each challenge would be designed to force her into trying something she might not otherwise have done. Some of them might be easy – perhaps incorporating a specific ingredient into a meal; some might be a little more challenging.
And so this blog was born. The format is simple: I will post a challenge, Anya will then make one or more posts documenting her response to the challenge, ideally accompanied by photographs of the result.
Naturally, we need to set down a few ground rules:
- All challenges will be realistic and reasonable. I won’t ask Anya to barbecue a swan or make walrus kebabs or anything like that. I might, however, ask her to find and use some unusual ingredients. She lives in a large city, and has the Internet at her disposal, so sourcing ingredients shouldn’t be too difficult. I certainly won’t ask Anya to do anything I wouldn’t readily atttempt myself.
- We need deadlines, but we should be flexible here. I think two weeks to complete a challenge should be the target. Some easy challenges may turn out to be much quicker, some more complex ones may take a little longer.
- Anya is allowed to decline a challenge for any reason. Of course, this would be regarded as a cowardly response, and she would be shamed before the whole of the Internet. Refusals are strongly discouraged.
So, let the games commence.
No comments yet.