Marlene’s Designer Portraits » images that will touch your heart!

I’m not much of a cook – I used to be – when I was growing up in a family of 7 siblings and my parents.  I was the second oldest child, and at age 12  my job was to bake a batch of dinner rolls each Saturday – about 6 dozen at a time!  I did other cooking as well but mostly experimental.   Over the years I have not enjoyed cooking – there are more exciting things to do!  But a couple of years ago I took some Healthy Cooking Classes at the Steinbach Arts Council.  At the time, the instructor was Walter Zogar.  Walter has written a book and has his own website and believes in and teaches healthy cooking.  He opened my eyes to how fun it could be to cook!  I came away with a lot of great recipes – but what I learned was how to recognize ingredients well enough to create your own dishes!

Today I was adventurous and didn’t want to heat up the house (it is now 31.8 degrees out there at 6 pm!!!), so I used my rice cooker to cook up some brown basmati rice.  I didn’t have a lot of ingredients in the house – but I sliced up some garlic and heated that – added a tin of black beans (rinse well to get off the high amount of sodium content); several squeezes of  Mixed Herbs; 1/2 can of whole canned tomatoes and – my secret ingredient – sliced ripe black olives!

Simmering on the stove….

And – ready to eat.  Yes – it was just as yummy as it looks!

I have to say that I have learned a lot about cooking from two great friends, who are also great photographers!  Inge Skliors and Patty Boge.    And yes – I kind of got this idea from Patty’s Brazilian Black Beans (Feijoada).