New cooks in Bellevue

Ok so I've been eating out every day for the last year, maybe two years. Every single day, cafeteria, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Italian, American, Greek, Mexican(really popular in Redmond\Seattle), Russian(Piroshky!), fast food, slow food, good food, bad food everything. Yeah yeah, it costs a lot of money, most food in restaurants aren't good for you blah blah. I know the story but was never motivated enough to do anything about...that is until now...

A friend of mine read a few books, Fast Food Nation and some other one, about the food and produce industry in the United States and became a self-proclaimed critic about the different kinds of meats you get, either at restaurants/grocery stores whatever. Everytime we went somewhere he would comment on the meat, whether it was up to par etc... I just noded because I really couldn't tell if the meat was good in deep fried lemon chicken or whatever. But he had a point. He longed for better meat, organic, well maintained animals I guess. And he found some farms online that ship their 100% natural organic meat to anywhere in U.S.. I think the first time he got back bacon and some steaks and said it was amazing. So this time around we got a complete package, cube steak, normal steak, ground beef and some massive piece of leg I think, not sure. It was about $100 bucks.

So the food arrived about a month ago and was sitting in the freezer, patiently, until yesterday. After some pursuasion about how bad the food was we were eating and how it affected our sleep schedule and other random things, he was also convinced we should do something. We did kind of put the blame solely on the food, and not our extra-curricular activities or the fact that we try to watch 3 movies every night, which might have been unfair...

So we set out to the WholeFood Market something to buy the ingredients to the dish we wanted to make. Apparently paying 2-3 dollars extra gets you better quality food, and if it says organic on it even better. We bought all the stuff we could and headed back home to cook the feast, tomato meat sauce with wheat fusilli (found it on some web page). By the way, even the trip to this place made me feel healthier, I think I would have been happy just walking in and leaving, maybe getting a burger on the way home...

Anyways the whole recipe thing took an hour to make and it was a moderate success. We cut, boiled, stirred, chopped, mashed like the best of them and made enough meat sauce for a small army; or the two of us for 3 days. We did invite some people over to eat and enjoy our new found skills but they all declined silently...

I would recommend cooking something to anyone. Like something that makes you use the stove, not for pre-made pizza, but maybe a simple dish you had as a kid. The food does taste different, I guess thats the homely feel, but it feels good to eat something you prepared. If anyone has ideas on food or good recipes let me know.

Bon Appetit!