Not Everything, Mark Bittman

For the first (or maybe second) time in my life and I cooking out of a cookbook. For a long time I have looked at different recipes from different places and then made something dervies form my impressions of those mixed with the limitations of my on hand ingredients. But now, when I want to make something, I look it up in one book and one book only, Bittman's How to Cook Everything. For years I have been telling my mom that if she was a good mom she would get me a copy of the Joy of Cooking. This year she relented and hot me the "hipper" Joy, the Everything.
How is Bittman doing so far? Like I mentioned -- no gyozas so I had to free form that one with the aid of the wrapping instructions on the package of wonton skins I got. Would have liked to know if I was supposed to cook the meat before folding or not (I did, and it ended up a little dry, hard to wrap, and not molded to the dough like my picture of how gyozas are supposed to be. No Eggie Parm, etiher, though a lot of eggplant cooking strategy suggestions that were fun to read. Just as well I guess, cause EP is pretty tedious and I have got it down to a point where I cheat by cooking eggplant in medalions and then cutting polenta and mozzerella madellions, stacking them up, pouring over tomato sauce and, of course, some parm on top. Still takes about an hour, though. I aslo looked up a french onion soup, but more just to confirm it was basically the same as what I was planning to do. I should add that he has good sections of equipment that have been nice bedtime reading.
Bittman's biggest win thus far comes in the cake category. I was dissapointed to find only three cake recipes in this five pound book when I went to birthday it up for a friend on Monday. The choices are golden, chocolate, and something else. I went with teh golden, in three layers, electing to add both the optional vanilla and the option oragnge zest, though without the requested almond extract (besides vanilla, I only had peppermint on hand and it just seemed like the wrong direction). while it was baking, I got lured into making buttercream frosting by the faithful friend who was sitting on my floor (not so much with the kitchen space in Eastlake's most cheap-rent apartment) cutting up gummy candies to my specifications ("Thinnner! Can you do some of the ltters in gummy relief?" So back into the mixer with yet another stick of butter and four cups of sugar. Whizpow. Buttercream frosting is like crack. I think most of us are drawn to the occasional from the can spoonful of duncan hines frosting, but the buttercream -- it's like the platonic ideal of that. It's like I am mounting Gatsby's skyward staircase with every finger lick. So today I had to put the bowl with the rest of the leftover frosting in the sink with the dishes because feeding the addiction was going to spoil my taste for any non-manna-of-heaven food for the rest of my days.
So I am back down with Bittman. Please someone have another birthday soon.