Cooking offers so much more than just some food we can eat to not be hungry anymore.\u00a0 Like a sense of accomplishment.\u00a0 That’s what I felt after cooking some leeks that were really good.<\/p>\n
Successfully cooking leeks may not sound like much, unless you know all the hesitancy, and even anxiety, I felt about developing 20 leek recipes for the winter issue of Vegetable of the Month<\/a>.\u00a0 Would I ever get a feel for this vegetable?<\/p>\n Wondering if others feel hesitant, maybe even anxious, when faced with a new vegetable, I wrote an article in the winter issue, sharing the three strategies that helped me drum up the inspiration to tackle leeks.<\/p>\n First I flushed out the bogeyman that was scaring me away from leeks.\u00a0 It was actually of my own making:\u00a0 I had always been too lazy to learn the right way to cook leeks, so I kept cooking them the wrong way.\u00a0 Quite predictably, the leeks tasted awful and I didn’t want to try them any more.<\/p>\n After dredging up that bogeyman, I forced myself to tackle it by researching the right way to cook leeks.<\/p>\n Finally, I drug myself out to the kitchen to experiment, and when I say “drug,” I mean exactly that.\u00a0\u00a0 The weight of so many bad taste memories was as good as a 50-pound anchor around my neck.\u00a0 To my credit, however, I motivated us out to the kitchen, me and the anchor, and jumped knee deep into leek cooking.\u00a0 But this time I slowed down and consciously cooked the leeks as I’d learned:\u00a0 “sweating” carefully, over low heat, for not too long.<\/p>\n The result:\u00a0 Sweet success, not only figuratively but literally.\u00a0 Properly cooked, leeks have a sublime sweetness, hard as that is to believe.\u00a0 This success has prompted me to add one more New Vegetable Strategy to the three in my article:<\/p>\n No. 4:\u00a0 Learn Right From the Start<\/strong><\/p>\n Learning to cook with leeks would have been a lot quicker and easier had I not been burdened by so much bad-taste baggage.\u00a0 In this sense, I am reminded of my experience with downhill skiing.<\/p>\n I was “taught” to downhill ski by being dumped at the top of a hill along with some advice to ski down.\u00a0 I was a horrible skier for years.\u00a0 Although my husband eventually taught me to become a reasonably competent skier, I had to painfully unlearn all the bad form and habits I had fallen into and never did I acquire a real love for the sport.<\/p>\n Cross-country skiing, on the other hand, was a completely different story.\u00a0 I got proper instruction right from the start, became pretty good and, most importantly, came to love the sport.<\/p>\n So don’t wait to learn the right way to cook vegetables, and especially don’t let any more distasteful eating experiences spoil your feelings for a vegetable.\u00a0 Vegetable a Month <\/a>is here to help you learn right from the start.<\/p>\n And here’s sweet success to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cooking offers so much more than just some food we can eat to not be hungry anymore.\u00a0 Like a sense of accomplishment.\u00a0 That’s what I felt after cooking some leeks that were really good. Successfully cooking leeks may not sound like much, unless you know all the hesitancy, and even anxiety, I felt about developing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,2,1],"tags":[135,311,364,525],"class_list":["post-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-make-vegetables-taste-good","category-healthy-cooking-basics","category-uncategorized","tag-cooking-inspiration","tag-how-to-cook-with-leeks","tag-leeks","tag-skiing","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}