Outside the Box Challenge

I think the most difficult challenge for me might be a tie between the Don’t Pour Some Sugar On Me and the Note Your Nibbles Tests, but probably the No Sugar one wins out overall, just because so much of what I have in my kitchen has sugar in it, and I’d never noted that before.  I didn’t take time to go shopping beforehand, but it wasn’t like my cupboard was entirely bare, so the fact that it was hard to find something sugarless even amongst all the food I did have was kind of disconcerting.  In a good way, but still disconcerting.

The easiest challenge for me, without hesitation, was the Frontier Girl Test.  I love getting in the kitchen and trying something new, playing about with recipes, making things up.  It’s actually kind of ironic, because when I was a kid, learning how to cook, I was always really uptight about following the recipe to the letter.  My mother, who taught me how to cook and bake, is very relaxed about such things, and would just use recipes as a guideline, and I’d often wake up to find a recipe she’d left on the kitchen counter for me to try… for which we’d have about half the ingredients.  Back then, it annoyed me so much, but now I’m exactly like that too, which is why the Frontier Girl Test was so easy and fun for me, because it let me be myself in the kitchen while still challenging me to step up and try something totally new.

Overall, this whole experience has been awesome; part of my New Year’s Resolution was to keep myself more accountable for trying new things on a regular basis, and these challenges have been a really great part of holding me to that.  Thank you for providing the opportunity to be a part of it!

-Nelle