What do you gets get your inspiration to cook new things from?

>>8240118
Google.

>>8240118
Ethnic grocery stores.

>>8240145
This, chink stores are a goldmine

>>8240145
>>8240154
How do you mean?

>>8240163
"the hell are these noodles?" "The hell are these mushrooms?" "The fuck is this vegetable?" "Can my body survive this sauce?"

>>8240163
dawg you ever heard of hennessy eggs found that at a best buy its just eggs pickled in hennessy

>>8240118
For me there are three main sources of inspiration:

Eating out - If I go eat at someplace interesting that's likely to inspire me to make dishes in that direction. This especially applies to restaurants that do cuisines from other countries. If I get a benchmark for what the food is supposed to taste like it's not all that difficult to reproduce it in my own kitchen.

Travel - Visiting a place with a decent cooking tradition usually means a few dishes from that tradition will find their way into my home cooking afterwards. The most inspiring places I've been so far have been Italy, Spain, Morocco, Greece, France, Japan and Mexico. But I've learned some stuff from Germany, Scandinavia and even Switzerland. Travel is amazing if you can manage to pull it off.

Immigrant friends - Most of what I know about wine came from hanging out with people who immigrated from France, Spain and Italy. When I first started cooking I had access to a few immigrant mothers who showed me some basics. These included a Portuguese, a couple Italians, an ethnic Greek from Turkey and a Cantonese home cook. That was a great start. Living in a place where many immigrants settle I've since been schooled by various Caribbeans, Mexicans, Poles, French, Italians, Thais, Japanese, South Asians, various Middle Easterners and Chinese, as well as the children of immigrants who learned their parents' cooking. And they tell me where to get the ingredients I need to make those cuisines. I'm thankful to live in a place where ingredients like bitter melon, curry leaves, fava beans and za'atar are barely exotic.

Usually drunken bullshitting with one of my friends,we're on the same level most of the time and both don't mind spending a shit ton of time in the kitchen doing something that may or may not work out.

My housemate (who I share meals with) isn't very adventurous. So I have to tone some of my spur of the moment things down.

Eating out also helps, and so does browsing the internet.