Stress Cooking..!!

You've heard of stress eating, right? Well, I do this new thing called stress cooking. When I'm stressed out about work there's just something about following a recipe (or even making up my own) that calms and relaxes me. When I was unemployed for the past 6+ months (or FUNemployed as my friend recently called it) I took up cooking as a hobby. I come from an Italian family of cooks, bakers, and professional eaters so I guess the day was bound to happen.

It actually started as a baking hobby. I found a Betty Crocker Cupcakes book and I decided to try out a few. I made ones that looked like frogs, Spongebob, monkeys, Elmo, you name it, I decorated it. I test drove them on the kids I babysit for and they went over so well that I've actually been paid to make cupcakes for birthday parties, holiday parties and other special occasions (including a cake I made for a party my mom was having with the women she plays golf with).

There are some really great blogs out there about cooking and baking (especially cupcakes!) but my favorite I have to say is one of my friends (lets call her Cooking Working Girl) that started a blog called Big Girls, Small Kitchen. It is "a food and recipe guide for twenty-something cooks looking for user-friendly, affordable ways to navigate their kitchens. More importantly, this blog offers fun and easy entertaining tips to help all cooks make the most of the tools available, big kitchen or small."

Congratulations to Cooking Working Girl for actually building enough traffic to her blog to get noticed by a publisher! Her cookbook will be in stores next summer!