I’m a food addict, so I come by my love of cooking through necessity.  While my tastes are very mainstream, I love trying to make the great dishes I’ve enjoyed at restaurants and many simple dishes I’ve enjoyed since childhood.  But not being able to afford to eat out very often has encouraged me to become a better cook.  I’m 50+ years old and I’ve been cooking for myself for over 30 years, and I still can’t make a decent cup of coffee.  And even my hamburgers are nothing special.  So I don’t hold myself out as a great cook.  I’ve also had my fill of fast food.  I can’t tell you how many times Maggie and I would be on our way home from someplace and I couldn’t decide where to stop to buy something for dinner.  The little California town we lived in had two McDonald’s, a Taco Bell, and a handful of take-out places.  And coming home was usually on a Sunday, which meant our favorite Chinese deli was closed, so I’d almost always end up cooking something simple and satisfying.  But I have a couple of simple dishes that just tickle me because they taste good and look impressive.  I’ve often said that if the dish looks good, you’ve got the battle half-won.

If you’re reading this and you do any of your own cooking, I’m sure you’ve found as I have that the Internet has an enormous store of recipes for beginners.  That’s where I found the recipes for two of my go-to dishes: meatloaf and cinnamon rolls.  Okay, so it doesn’t take any great talent to make meatloaf, but this is apparently a pretty famous recipe called “Clyde’s Meatloaf” by Clyde’s of Reston VA, that I stumbled across several times.   I like it because it’s very sweet.  It uses honey and grated carrots, and it comes out gorgeous with the carrots giving small bits of color.  Here we go…
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