Cooking Basics

Cooking and I don't get along. That's not to say that I don't cook. Because, as you know, with the "no fast food" rule in full effect, I don't have any other choice. I can't eat out, and I can't eat raw food and/or peanut butter sandwiches every day. So, I cook. Begrudgingly, I cook.

I don't know why the cooking gene skipped over me, but it did. My grandparents owned a restaurant in Topeka for years, and both could cook up a storm. My mom doesn't loooove cooking by any stretch of the imagination, but she can in fact cook; I don't remember ever seeing a recipe book out, and we always managed to have something on the dinner table with few complaints from her. In fact, she gives me a hard time because I look things up on the Internet and follow recipes to a T. My older brother even makes the gravy at Thanksgiving dinner, a job he's now had for years.*

So, I cook. I follow recipes to the letter. I wish I could just throw stuff in and go. In fact, I've tried. And usually, things just taste off. Not bad, but just not as good as the recipe. Alan and I even coined a phrase that can be used to describe a tough situation or difficult task because of one of my kitchen foibles: "It's like pickin' corn out of chili." I did in fact think, "Chili? How about Tex-Mex style with corn?" and added a can of corn. Needless to say I regretted this addition, and therefore tried to pick it out, kernel by kernel. I swore Alan to secrecy, but it's too funny not to share.

I often laugh at myself when I'm doing something ridiculous in the kitchen. Usually I think things like, "It's a good thing no one's watching me" or "My mom would laugh at me for this." Tonight I made a tasty dish that involved adding bite-size pieces of chicken to an egg/flour/water mixture to coat. As I'm WHISKING the chicken to mix it, and chicken is getting stuck in the whisk, I thought, "I'm pretty sure this isn't how they would teach me to do this in cooking class." Oh, cooking class. My 6-week rotation in middle school was NOT enough to teach me how to cope in the real world. Making a Purple Cow (grape juice drink of some kind) and cookies do not a chef make.

Hopefully one day I will have children who love to cook. They'll get home from school, throw together something delicious, and dinner will be waiting for Alan and me when we get home from work. Now I more fully understand why my mom was so thrilled to have me get started on dinner for her when I was younger. Who wants to come home after a long day at work and have yet another huge task at hand? So I've decided that I'll quit trying to love cooking because, let's be honest, what's to like? You have to go to the store, haul groceries in, unload, slice, dice, saute, steam, bake, dish up, eat, and then once done, you've got a huge mess on your hands. Oooh, maybe one day Alan and I will have a child who is especially gifted at cleaning.....

*My younger brother, however, thinks if a meal has more than 2 steps it's too much work, so maybe I'm not doing so bad after all....