Reaching Outside of Your Comfort Zone

​It’s easy to stay comfortable. We all do it. Cook the same recipes, paint the same type of paintings. Travel to the same plein air destinations.

But sometimes we need to reach outside of the box. Push the limits and try new things.

Last night my family and I had a lot of fun cooking a gourmet dinner. We decided we could only prepare new recipes (that we had never cooked before) and they had to be hard. Difficult. Like a zillion steps difficult.

So we pulled out my cookbook from The French Laundry (that I have never opened) and we picked two recipes that looked yummy (and difficult to make). Then I found a recipe on Epicurous for fresh ravioli that would allow me to use my new pasta attachments for my Kitchen Aid Mixer. (One of the gifts that said "To Leslie, From Leslie" and never made it under the tree.)
 
The hardest part was the grocery shopping. Yes, I had no idea what a parsnip looked like. (Apparently it’s just a white carrot.) I also found out that Black Sea Bass is an endangered fish and not available. And I was really happy to learn that you could buy a really good fish stock in leiu of having to buy 20 mussles and make your own. So we improvised. Which was fine.

Then we cooked for over two hours tonight and made an awesome dinner. It was very gourmet, a bit “out there” and a lot of fun. And it was completely out of my comfort zone.

I think we are going to try it again on Christmas Eve. When was the last time you pushed yourself outside of your comfort zone?