We can’t always eat out here at Dig Lounge, rising gas prices combined with rising food costs, make it increasingly difficult to eat out. Not all of us are natural cooks though. But having friends over for dinner and a bottle of wine can be just as much, if not more fun than going out. Not to mention those who cook together, stay together, or so I’ve heard. Unless of course you’re Gordon Ramsey. Then I can’t imagine anyone staying together after cooking with him in the kitchen.
If you can’t cook, don’t fear. In this year of the digital age, you have a few options when it comes to cooking at home. You can watch foodTV and hope you can mimic what you saw in a 20 min speed cooking demonstration. You can take classes at Sur La Table or Epicurean for anywhere from $70 on up to $1400. You can go to Kitchen Academy in Hollywood or the California School of Culinary Arts in Pasadena for tens of thousands of dollars.
But there are better and cheaper options. Just check out Rouxbe. The online cooking school. For just $99 a year, they offer plenty of great instructional videos. Not only cooking up some great looking recipes, but other educational videos like Kitchen Tools & Equipment, Baking Essentials, Garnishes & Presentation and several other great videos. The three latest videos are free, as are all of the text versions of recipes. They have high production value and are easy to follow along.
If $99 isn’t in your budget check out the 30 or so cooking podcasts via the iTunes store. They are all free to download, work on mac and pc, and you can load them into your video iPod and watch them in the kitchen. They are hit and miss with production values, and they don’t get updated very often, but you’re cheap and it’s free.
Wed, Jun 11, 2008
Food