I woke up this morning with the urge to get in the kitchen. The sun had just come up – my shining hours. I love the mornings and always feel the most creative and alive when the day is young. I knew I wanted to spend this morning making something yummy before time slipped away and I got all caught up in my day.
Cooking is like therapy – I always get lost in stirring and mixing, feeling soothed by the smells and sounds of a tasty work in progress. I like to think of recipes more like methods, kind of like a math problem or a series of steps or ideas. This + that = delicious.
My roommate and I were just talking yesterday about this, actually. She loves to bake, and quite frankly… I can’t stand it. Perhaps it’s the mental scars of a day spent baking banana bread, only to spill the entire pan of batter on the floor and run fleeing to my room, sobbing uncontrollably. Perhaps this sob session wasn’t about the banana bread…
Anyway, I digress. She likes it because it’s so exact – there’s measurements and rules to follow that create a final product. But that’s exactly why I can’t stand it. I actually don’t have any measuring cups in my apartment here – and I’m finding it quite liberating. No measuring oats, or quinoa, or this or that.
I just like to throw stuff in and see what happens. It’s much more fun like that, yes?
So this morning, I donned my apron (okay, really I donned my polka dot pajamas, but apron sounded much more 1950’s-housewife-home-made-granola-esque), grabbed my red pan and wooden spoon and made another batch of stove top granola, only this time….better.
This time I toasted the almonds and walnuts with the oats making them nice and crunchy, used a little bit more butter (because, well, why not?), agave as a sweetener, and the magic ingredient – grey salt.
I picked up this very large bag of Gros sel Guérande at the agricultural fair this past weekend (look for a post soon!) for 2 euro and have been using it in everything since. It’s an all natural and unrefined salt from Guérande, France and is quite famous in the culinary world…or so I hear. I do know for certain that it tastes delicious and that it made all the difference in my stove-top granola this morning.
After getting lost in the scents of cinnamon and melting butter, I made some breakfast with my fresh batch of granola.
I mixed some plain yogurt with about 1 tablespoon of chia seeds, and topped it with the crispy granola that was sweet and salty to perfection, as well as a little dollop of somethin’ special…
Vanilla Chestnut Cream. So delicious. So dangerous, but so delicious. It’s all about balance…right?
Question: Baking or cooking…which do you prefer and why? Do you use measuring cups when you cook? Do you follow recipes or do you do your own thing?
I used to be clueless in the kitchen – like didn’t know how to put anything together. I started to experiment a bit and gave myself permission to get creative and try things when I cook. After a while of following recipes I had a general idea of what might taste good together and also drew from experiences dining out and trying new combinations in restaurants. Sometimes my creations are are flops, but sometimes, like this morning, it works.
Have a good day, my friends.
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I love to cook anything really but I do so love baking. I enjoy “vegansing” baked goods and whilst there are some rules you have to obey (such as the ratio of wet to dry) I’m not a huge follower of recipes. Sometimes this ends in disaster. Sometimes I surprise myself!
I’m definitely more of a baker! I love making sweets for people, and I have a raging sweet tooth myself :) That Bonne Maman sounds amazing…have you tried Marrons-Suises? Chestnut mousse. It’s one of the things I miss most about France!
Cooking is wonderful therapy! I enjoy both cooking and baking. On one end you have the ability to throw things in! They can mix, mingle, be delicious! On the other you have a very precise process, one missed ingredient or a tablespoon too much of something can end in disaster!
Not with cooking, though! Don’t like it? Leave it out, it will hardly suffer!
P.S.- I love reading your Parisian adventures everyday <3
not to be cliche, but i really enjoy them both! i love how methodical baking is, the challenge of making something that, if it’s even a little bit off in one area, can be ruined. but cooking is so freeing in the fact that you can just throw stuff together and make something new EVERY TIME. both are so relaxing and just a great creative outlet. i love food :)
Hi Courtney! I’ve been following your blog for awhile now and you are absolutely adorable! I traveled to Paris a few years ago and absolutely loved it! It completely changed the way I appreciated food (spending 2+ hours for lunch?! how fabulous!).
I’m definitely a baker. I like the structuredness (is that even a word? haha) with the measuring but the freedom of adding as many yummy ingredients as you see fit. And, I’m definitely more of a sweet than savory person so that probably has a lot to do with it as well!
I love both, it’s so soothing and makes me feel better. When I do it right, of course.When it doesn’t turn out so good, I feel crappy
I found myself agreeing with everything you said, and everything your roommate felt about baking. I love precise, exact baking, but I also love throwing things together in the kitchen like you do. Baking can be a stress outlet, but it has definitely caused some tears that was likely rooted in other areas of my life. I never saw that Bonne Maman spread in Belgium! I did try lait confiture once, that was pretty tasty!
You always have the most amazing pictures. Everything looks delicious! You also make me want to go back to Paris as a new foodie and eat tons delicious treats.
Your blog caused me to stop and think about baking vs cooking…I’m with you re the boring exact-ness required by the former and love the relative freedom inherent in the latter. However, I do like to bake occasionally, and find I get about 75% success. Which isn’t too bad I guess. I think the other necessary ingredient for baking is patience, which I don’t have in abundance, and it seems neither do you. C’est la vie!
I did want a measuring cup for my life in Paris, but try to find one, impossible! I brought mine home as a hard won souvenier, but it is useless here, plastic, only in metric. How do the French connoct all those wonderful baked goods without measuirng???
And, re your physical state in Paris, I was in the best shape of my life while living there, ate anything I wanted, stayed slim, and walked everywhere, although I’ll admit some of those stairs in the Metro can be daunting. Just enjoy yourself!
I like baking and cooking, but for different reasons. I like baking because there are usually yummy leftovers for the week. Sometimes, this is overwhelming for me, but the freezer comes in handy. I tend to stick to recipes and measuring cups with baking. With cooking, I’m much more experimental. I go without a recipe sometimes, or I tweak something based on ingredients I have. I told my husband the other day that the highlight of my day is making a meal for us. It gives me that instant gratification that I don’t get at work. Ha.
I absolutely love baking, but slightly fear cooking because I think I’m not that good at it. I’ve been working on getting in the kitchen for more savory dishes, but when a want to relax in the kitchen, I whip up a baked treat!
Love the granola idea. I’m out right now, so this looks like what I’m going to be doing this evening!
Cooking!! Absolutely 100% cooking! I love the whole – no rules, just right – attitude. It is a great way for me to put my heart & soul into my meals and add a little of my own personality into the food with the random ingredients I tend to throw into recipes. Don’t get me wrong, I love baked goods, I just prefer them being made by someone else & I can be the taster :)
I love baking! I definitely modify and improvise as I go though ;-)
I am trying this out today for sure. I’ll let you know how it goes and post it for you :) And don’t forget to come visit my blog and enter the giveaway!
I have always preferred cooking – but now I’m learning to love baking as well, especially since buying the Healthy Artisan Bread in 5 mins a day cookbook and bookmarking 10,000 sweet bread / cookie / muffin recipes online. I don’t often stick that strictly to the recipe myself, although I don’t yet have the confidence to invent baking recipes from scratch.
BTW, I tried your method of slowly cooking red pepper and onion in olive oil the other day and loved it!
Vanilla chestnut cream?! Where oh where does one find that!!!
I am in culinary school, but my passion lies in baking. It is SO calming for me. I am like your roommate- I love exact measurements, that it is chemistry- if everything is put in the right way and the variables considered, it will turn out the way you want.
On the other hand, I love cooking as well. I like throwing things together and creating new dishes. I use recipes frequently, generally only for convenience of grocery shopping! I only use measuring cups in baking and with recipes!
xo
K
Wow the granola sounds sooo freaking delicious. I want to try the stovetop way soo bad!
I prefer baking, and use a food scale because I’ve learned volume can’t be relied upon. But if you want to talk about things that are so good yet so dangerous, you must check out the organic/raw/vegan Love Street foods (+chocolate!) promo/freebie code on my blog. The 100% Organic Raw Vegan Chocolate Coconut Spread is out-of-this-WORLD. Link: http://www.lovestreetlivingfoods.com/Organic-Raw-Vegan-Coconut-Chocolate-Spread-p/chocolate-coconut-spread.htm&Click=3377. (Sorry, mistyped the link in the last post; feel free to delete it!)
I’m definitely a baker (and thus why I went to the Culinary Institute of America for a bit)! I’m very math and science oriented so I love the chemical reactions that happen in baking in order to produce a product. Nerdy? Yes, but do fun! Unfortunately, we can’t live off of sweets so I’ve learned cooking from my grandmother and mother- two fabulous cooks- and put my own spin to it. When I cook, I don’t use measuring cups unless I’m trying to build a recipe, but when I bake, I always use measuring cups because you have to be precise.
I hope you’re having fun in Paris! I’m living vicariously through you :)
When you’re up in the AM whipping up healthy and delicious breakfasts like this, do you ever laugh about what the rest of the college-age people in the world are probably doing? It always cracks me up to think about that. And I’m completely not capable of creating recipes on my own. This girl needs her measuring cups!
I love both! Infact, I baked a cake last night and then cooked lunch for today. I’ve got my bases covered.
:)
I wish I could find that creme des marrons vanille in the states. I can find bonne maman, I can find sweetened chestnut cream, but not the one glorious combo.
I’m with you 100% – cooking is so much more fun for me! Love reading about all your adventures, pretty lady!
ah so torn. i think my left side of the brain loves baking bc secretly i like math/measurements/numbers–but my right side–the side that loves writing so much more than math–enjoys cooking for the same reasons you expressed. i love just throwing things together and improvising. i think cooking wins :)
My friend and I were just discussing the cooking v. baking issue the other day! As much as I love to cook, I prefer baking. I think part of it is because I have a massive sweet tooth, but I think the other thing is that cooking is something I *have* to do, because I have to eat to survive/stay healthy/avoid massive headaches. Baking, on the other hand, is something I *choose* to do. Also, something about the precision is soothing to me. Digging in and following a recipe is somehow relaxing for me, maybe because if it doesn’t turn out I can claim that I followed the recipe so it’s not my fault, and I always play around with cooking recipes too much for that :-D
I’m probably more of a baking-girl. I think it’s because I like those types of foods more – muffins, cookies, granola, bread, etc. And I do like the specificity of it all….oh, type A personality. :)
Hi! I just recently started following your blog but I HAD to comment…I am also a UF student studying abroad this semester! I am actually in Florence, Italy, through an outside program. Just had to share that.
I am loving your blog already, and am feeling inspired to start one myself when I get back home in May. Keep up the good work and ENJOY YOUR SEMESTER!
Haha you took the words right out of my mouth! I prefer cooking over baking, but I hate when a cooking recipe entails that you actually FOLLOW the recipe to a tee! Haha that’s why I don’t cook with meat a lot (also, I don’t eat meat) but because meat is so picky and expensive if you screw it up! I would much rather make things up as I go along, if it doesn’t come out perfect, oh well, try it differently next time! The downfall is that I sometimes don’t break out and try enough different foods because I don’t want to buy food and then waste it by not cooking something I want to eat, so in those cases I will sometimes look for a “guide recipe” :) I liked this post! And I love your site.
I enjoy both baking and cooking. Whenever I bake, it’s usually for someone else so there’s an element of charity and goodwill will felt while I measure the precise ingredients and follow the specific steps. I do love to find and try new recipes, and I usually adhere to them. Sometimes I like to use the recipe as a basic foundation and let my own creativity and judgement determine where the meal will go from there.
That granola bowl looks out of this world, especially with the addition of that Vanilla Chestnut Cream!
PLEASE HURRY BACK! I am in dyer need of another batch of your granola…as only you can make it. xoxoxo