The pandemic has changed us in so many ways, I literally can not write about all of them. But I do know that being indoors so much and consuming so much television, my creative mind has wandered off in search of nourishment.
Enter The Great Courses. This site has courses for sale on a zillion different topics and ideologies. You’ve got to hit one of their frequent sales unless you’ve hit the lottery or recently sold an app to Facebook. My latest escapades deal with something the pandemic has forced me to do…cooking. The series is actually called “The Everyday Gourmet” and has five or six courses of 14 to 30 lectures each. There are helpful tips and hints and recipes that are completed before your eyes.
I love this stuff. I view complicated recipes like a science fiction novel. I read it all of the way through and think “Yea, that’s not gonna happen.” The recipes with never been heard of before ingredients are the best. But recipes that try to trick me into making things like barbecue sauce from scratch, those are the most conniving. The minute I see tomato paste and brown sugar, I can only think that a lovely bottle of Baby Ray’s would work and save me the small bowl that I’m supposed to be whisking in.
Cooking isn’t all that bad. I make completely passable meals that have yet to kill anyone. The worst part is cleaning up. You know those cute couples who when one cooks, the other cleans up. The hubby and I are not that couple. And to make matters worse, the dishwasher died so long ago… I don’t remember the last time it really worked. This is the 21st century folks! Where are my paper pots and pans?
I recently saw a cute poem on Facebook that kind of sums it all up:
Roses are red
Food is delicious
We use paper plates
‘Cause I hate doing dishes!
But the pandemic is not over, yet. So the trip to the grocery has become my “going out” this year. Another zillion meals will come out of the kitchen at my now more educated and capable hands. But I will keep the faith that one day, I’ll have a kitchen that handles the dishes like the Jetsons.
Oh, I’ll take a flying car too.