Student Publishing Program ::

Nathaniel Finch

My Cooking Adventures

For me, cooking is an experiment, a joy, and something to do when I am hungry and there is no one home to make me food. Mac and cheese, otherwise known as macaroni and cheese was my meal, from the time I was in fourth grade and old enough to use the stove. A ton of cheese and even more butter made it scrumptious, but “not very healthy,” said my mom. By high school, my tastebuds awakened and when my parents assigned me to cook a meal, I decided on Crab Rangoon. This dish includes a packet of dough with cream cheese fried in hot oil to make it crispy. Crab Rangoon was harder than Mac and Cheese. It took many runs to different supermarkets to find the right kind of dough. But, after the fifth attempt, I finally found it. It was tedious work to make 140 packets, but my family devoured them in a minute, I loved them so much I wanted to cook it again. For my second adventure, I went for the extreme challenge and switched continents, from Asia to America, and decided on, pulled pork. It was delicious, but I made enough to feed a football team. “Too much of a good thing,” said my dad. For my third adventure, I found a recipe in the New York Times for a candy sweet called turtles made with every nut in the plant kingdom topped with caramel and chocolate. Every surface in the kitchen from pots to the floor became dirty and sticky, but the results were out of this world. “Still not very healthy,” said my mom. I am deciding what to cook next, so maybe I will move onto Puerto Rico and try a coconut flan.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS, LHS CLASS OF 2009 EDITION]