It's a reasonable question given the fact that I am about to under take 15 new Bulgarian dishes in the month of February: How much do you cook? And I guess this is followed by what counts as cooking? Is turning on the stove or oven enough? Do you need a recipe? Does the dish have to exist on a restaurant menu or in Grandma's recipe box to count?

In one of my last posts, I guessed that I cook about 2 times a week and then I reheat most of my other meals or eat out. Mostly, I think that this is spot on. There's one of me, I often work late (or bring work home with me) and I hate to let food go bad in the fridge.

For example last week (Sunday to Saturday) I had veggie stir fry with an egg, homemade <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2010/05/09/pad-thai-esque/" target="_self">pad thai (a recipe that never gets old)</a>, and then I ended up celebrating a birthday of one of my colleague's children on Friday night.  Saturday morning I whipped up a <a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/2009/11/07/scones-in-sofia/" target="_blank">batch of scones</a> and Saturday night I ate out. I ate stove made oatmeal every morning and lunch at school.

I guess that if you look at what I made last week that's three dishes. But half of it is in a name like the veggie stir fry with an egg.  Sure I washed and chopped the veggies, I poured oil in a pan sauteed the veggies and cooked an egg "sunny side down" as I told my MoM over Christmas break (which in other words/menu speak is over-easy).

But is this really a dish? <!--more-->

When I was making it last week it was out of time, convenience and the fear that my peppers were going to go bad without me having eaten all of them.  In my mind, this meal was a concoction. Something I threw together out of need and necessity.

Did I use a recipe? Nope. Was it tasty? Yep, luckily.  Healthy? Well, I used four different veggies.  Does it count as a meal? Hell yes. But does it count as a dish? I guess so.--but I am not sure.

Okay, it's not like I was standing at my kitchen sink eating muesli and yogurt out of a bowl for dinner (which, gasp, I've also done before). This said, it wasn't the kind of dish I'd ever dream of serving a guest who I'd invited over for dinner.

So what counts? And how much are you cooking?

Interestingly, this whole post comes from a couple of different conversations I've had with people. Like last night when my MoM told me that 15 dishes in one month might be too ambitious.  Or a couple of weeks ago when a Bulgarian colleague was telling me that no one cooks any more. Then there was the conversation I was having with a Bulgarian living in a America who was lamenting the fact that Bulgarian girls don't know how to cook traditional Bulgarian food anymore.