Welcome to my kitchen!

Introductions first: My home consists of 1 Francophone Omnivore(Vivien), 1 Anglo Herbivore(me), and 1 Bilingual Omnivore kitten(Keats), and since I do most of the cooking, the human Omnivore of the household is mostly on a Herbivore diet. I am by no means a learned chef, but I am on a quest to become a better cook; specifically speaking, a better Vegan cook. I decided the best way to do so, would be to keep a daily log of all the comings and goings in my kitchen. Most importantly, I want to keep tally of all the recipes that result in being dubbed 'keepers' and the recipes that I need to tweak, and re-tweak, so that they too eventually garner a spot in my esteemed recipe collection. I recently purchased the cookbook Veganomicon, and on Thursday night I selected a Cashew/Pineapple/Quinoa recipe to try my hand at...the end result being: Vivien was a HUGE fan, and ate 3/4 of the meal, whereas I will certainly be tweaking the recipe the next time around, as I felt it required more pineapple juice and therefore did not deem it a culinary success. The main obstacles obstructing my goal of becoming an esteemed cook are(and not necessarily in this order): 1. My perfectionist attitude, which often results in my sulking over an otherwise satisfactory meal and 2. Vivien's critical nature in the kitchen, as he is extremely anal retentive to how meals should be prepared, and ultimately is a bummer when I am attempting to create a masterpiece in our kitchen. As well, he is a true Gourmand, and a glutton(I am never going to hear the end of this if he actually reads this), and is rarely sated as his stomach is a bottomless pit that continuously cries out for gourmet spreads. Nonetheless, we tend to spend most of our quality time in the kitchen together, harvesting our love/hate relationship for one another, as we delve into new culinary territories. This morning, we awoke rather late, and decided it was appropriate to make a brunch. Our table was laden with a stack of blueberry pancakes, a shared grapefruit, a cheese platter(Vivien) and a pot of green ginger tea. The blueberries are from the Summer, which we froze and brought with us to Ottawa when we moved in the Fall. The thing about Vivien and I, is that we love food, and ultimately, we love good food. Quality over quantity is my motto. Vivien demands both quality and quantity. So, although our income is limited, we refuse to cut corners in regards to our grocery bill, and instead cut corners in other areas. Tonight we are having Portobello mushroom burgers with sweet potato fries(due to time constraints), but tomorrow I am whipping up a red lentil/cauliflower/coconut curry dish and will be rushing out this afternoon to purchase the called for ingredients. Nothing makes me happier than shopping for food and/or cooking appliances!