This simple ingredient can lead to the gate way to many more complex dishes you would want to make. But what really is an egg? Is it just a breakfast food to be enjoyed first thing on a calm morning with some pancakes and bacon that your mom made you? Or can it be much more? It turns out that it can be more complex than what you expected. But hell its the morning who wants to make an Eggs Benedict, poached egg, or a damn soufflé. We are regular people, with a normal life yes we spice it up once in a while but those are rare for even myself to do all the extra steps in the morning. So I’m going to help you make the perfect(hopefully) sunny side up egg. You will only need 4 items, obviously an egg, salt, butter/oil(your preference), and a pan to cook it in. Lets see to start lets put the pan on the stove and turn it on to lets say medium or medium-low for that nice yoke. Now lets put a bit of oil or butter in the pan and let it heat up, crack the egg on the edge of the pan and let the insides land and start to cook. This step is very easy to mess up let it cook for a few minutes before you can put a lid on the pan. Unless you like the yoke to be hard then you are a little weird but who am I to judge. Putting the lid on after is a simple task the, timing is the hardest part of this, leaving it on for too long will make it’s yoke hard but not enough will make you eat some raw egg whites so you will need to use your eyes to make sure it doesn’t overcook. Let’s say you took of the lid at the most perfect time now its time to plate use a spatula to take out the egg or if you are fancy with it pick the pan up and turn it so the egg falls perfectly on the plate. But regardless you need to add a bit of salt or too much doesn’t matter, you will get to see your mistake. Congratulation! You have made a sunny side up egg. Probably, it could’ve been your first time making it or your thousandth time you would have probably messed it up regardless and that’s fine this is a step in a different road for cooking. Which you can make into anything you want it to be with that opportunity given from the slip up.

I once heard that in science, “the simplest answer was usually the correct one”. I find that quote to be a very wise one, that can be applied to all facets of life. I treat cooking the same way. We often see Michelin star chefs cooking using amazing tools, trying to impress everyone watching them. I prefer to keep things simple. For me, fried dumplings have been a comfort food that I enjoy eating for breakfast when I get the chance. This is a recipe where you must be careful, because you don’t want to burn the dumplings, but it also acts as a great test, to show that you can cook. Start by getting a frozen bag of fried dumplings at the supermarket. You could make it from scratch if you’re fancy like the super chefs I mentioned earlier but like I said, I prefer to keep things simple. Once you get that bag, hopefully from a nearby supermarket, you can bring it home, and take out a pan, and some oil as well. Put the pan on a stove and light the fire. Go ahead and throw some oil on there, and do it quickly. Then go ahead and dump some dumplings on there, and try to keep them as upright as possible. After a couple of minutes, get some hot water, and slowly pour it into the pan. and cover the pan. The water is going to defrost the dumplings, and the oil is going to prevent the dumplings from sticking to the pan. Make sure to look after the pan, and don’t let the dumplings burn. After a couple of minutes take off the lid and see where the dumplings are at. Make sure they haven’t burnt, but still have a nice char. Take them out and you can now eat. Fried dumplings, or potstickers, if you like, are dumplings that are usually made and then fried on a large pan. Usually they’ll have pork inside. They are my second favorite type of dumpling, behind soup dumplings, and I loved to eat them all the time as a kid. I remember that there was one specific restaurant my family would go to that was just known for fried dumplings. I would be so excited, and I remember I could eat a massive amount of dumplings, because they were just so good. To me, fried dumplings have always been comfort, and the crunch that comes with frying the dough of the dumpling has always been my favorite part of eating them. They hold a special place in my heart, and I hope you will enjoy them too.

• Firstly, we can start off at the supermarket and get a box of pancakes, I usually get the one in a red box, Pearl Milling, but the one I refer to it as and commonly known is Aunt Jemima. 
• Then, you should buy Aunt Jemima Syrup because I believe it’s the best. 
• Get a big bowl and a measuring cup and measure about 1 ½ cup of pancake mix and a little under ¾ cup of milk and one egg
• Stir it continually until there’s no flour chunks left, and while you stir it I put the vegetable oil in a pan and let it sit for 2 minutes
• Put ¼ of the mixture into one pancake and put it on high heat because I’m impatient
• Flip it over once you see the dots start bubbling in the pancake
• Recommend putting two pancakes in one pan to go by faster, even though there’s more likelihood for mistakes
• Then, get a plate and put syrup all over the pancake!

My personal relationship to pancakes is very tiring (included – because most of the time I make pancakes it’s because my little sister is waking me up from my sleep), but more fun and joyful. Every-time I eat pancakes, I’m never in a bad mood, I always have energy and look forward to what the day brings. I like to try to make it for myself and my family to start the day off right. I feel like once you start the day off productive you’ll more likely have a good day. I struggle with lack of motivation and have a tendency to “bed-rot” a lot, so simple tasks are always helpful to not enable them. Choosing to wake up early to cook shows a lot of determination and maturity, so I believe it’s the first step of me transitioning from a teenager to an adult. I’ve since started doing more hobbies after I cooked pancakes, like exercising and going out with new people. I look forward to seeing the person I become and slowly grow into the adult I always hoped to be as a kid – thanks to pancakes.

We will be using the Posting and Commenting function of blogs@baruch throughout the semester, so you’ll have to familiarize yourself with how to do this:

1. Scroll over “Blog” in the menu bar
2. Scroll down to “Blog #1: due 9/9”
3. Read the instructions (see below this list)
4. Click “+ New” in your top toolbar to add a new post
5. Answer the assignment in the text box
6. On the right side of the screen, find the “Categories” tab. Check the box next to “Blog #1: due 9/9” in order to properly upload it.
7. Click the “Publish” box to complete your post

Blog #1 Prompt:

À la Danny Licht’s excerpt we read in class, from Cooking As Though You Might Cook Again, write a recipe for something you like to cook/make. You can write this in a more traditional form, like a classic cookbook, or do something a little more strange and creative, like Licht does (the tone is more personal essay/poem than instruction manual). The choice is yours! You can include photos, quotes, quips, jokes, whatever! Make it YOU.

No matter how you write it, you are required to include at least one paragraph about, either:

• (1) where the recipe comes from, historically or culturally… What is the *objective* lineage of this dish or these food items? Is there some history around this food? Is there some social or cultural significance?
• (2) your personal relationship to this recipe/food item… What does this dish/these ingredients mean in your *subjective* life? Is there a personal history the food helped you deal with? How did the food nourish you? Is there some personal significance?

If you don’t cook, you can describe how to do something else that requires step-by-step instructions, and you still have to include the above paragraphs, somehow. Does the task have an objective history, or a subjective personal history?

Put your best foot forward… maybe we’ll make these into a class cookbook/guidebook?!?

PS – If you need some further inspiration, check out these recipes by poets.