Dutch Oven

I've been doing a lot of cooking recently, and making a lot of cooking magazine impulse purchases. I've been totally frustrated for a long time that tons of recipes call to be cooked in a Dutch oven. For weeks (no joke), I couldn't help wondering... what the heck is that?? Is it a type of oven (like a pot-bellied stove?), or more like a crock pot? Do I already own one and not know it? Gah!

Finally, after stumbling upon the Picture-Perfect Meals blog, and seeing a delicious chili recipe that called to be made in a dutch oven, I gave in a looked it up. A Dutch oven is a "thick-walled (usually cast-iron) cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid," so says Wikipedia.

See? Pretty.

And as it turns out, I have one! It's ceramic, but it has a tight-fitting lid and is used for cooking and it's a pot. And according to Wikipedia (which I am not ashamed to use as a credible source for all my baking needs), modern Dutch ovens are often ceramic, and are referred to as "casserole dishes." Yay!

According to the Wikipedia article, dutch ovens can be used as actual ovens over a camp fire by putting a baking dish inside--you can cook pies, buscuits, stews, etc. You can also stack them on top of each other to cook multiple things at a time because as the iron of the lowest pot gets hot, it heats the one above it and so on! How cool! Makes me want to go camping.

A note on my stromboli from last night: I apparently didn't seal the edges well-enough because when I took it out of the oven the bottom seam had vomitted the inside of the roll so it turned into a rather triangular-shaped, semi-rolled up pizza. Still good! But ugly.

I talked one-on-one with my poetry professor today and got some great advice about my poems for his class, and poetry in general. I also read a great article about "rules" of writing fiction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one. Check it out! It's funny and there are soem great pieces of advice to discover.

Learning lots,

Monica