A Culinary Adventure

In honor of Mother's Day, I decided to make crêpes for my mom, despite my meager cooking skills. Using a simple recipe I learned from French class, I managed to make a reasonably tasty brunch. There are many ways to make crêpes, but they can generally be divided into either sweet or savory crêpes. Sweet or savory basically refers to the kind of filling. The recipe I used was for sweet crêpes, or dessert crêpes, as they are called on the recipe.
Mix together:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T sugar
3 large eggs
2 cups milk
1 T vanilla
2 T melted butter
Now comes the fun part. Pour a small amount of batter into a frying pan (doesn't matter which size, but the smaller the better), just enough to coat the bottom. This is very important, since crêpes are pretty much just thin pancakes. Turn when the sides are brown. This step is easier said than done. It took me a few tries to master the art of flipping these fragile little things, especially due to their thin texture. Using your spatula, you want to scrape the sides of the crêpe all the way around it. Then, carefully lift it up and flip it over. The flipping needs to be a quick and swift motion, so that the sides don't fold over and stick to the rest of the crêpe. Lift it out of the pan when both sides are golden brown.
You can fill your sweet crêpes with many different ingredients. If you like chocolate (who doesn't?), chocolate chips make a great filling when the crêpe is still warm. (Yum, melted chocolate!) But, most people put in fresh fruit, jams, jellies, or preserves, particularly if they're semi-health nuts like me. :) Finally, top it off with some powdered sugar, which I unfortunately lacked today. Bon appétit!
Additionally, I made a colorful salad, part of my dinner. Who knew a lettuce medley, cucumbers, tomatoes, strawberries (leftovers from the crêpes), almonds, and sunflower seeds would look and taste delicious?
<= Here is my creation, sans the dressing and croutons, which I added later. One of my life goals is to become a decent cook so that when I get out into the real world, I'll be able to survive without depending on others for edible food. So, today was hopefully the beginning of a long and fruitful (no pun intended) culinary journey.
Btw, to all the foodies out there, or if you're just looking for a good read, I recommend Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. It is clever, witty, and informative. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through it, but I have enjoyed reading it. As far as the movie version is concerned, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams will be perfect for the leading roles.