I like a lot of things. I like to cook for instance. Cooking lets me try different flavors and expand my horizons in a culinary way. Of course, there are those recipes that I look at and read the list of 400 exotic ingredients with 45 steps to completion. Not gonna happen…ever. I have always confessed that if you are what you eat, I’m cheap, fast and easy. I love a simple list of ingredients, easy cooking method (preferably crockpot), and five star results. Not too much to ask, is it?
Cooking presents certain challenges to me though. For instance, my husband is picky. And not only the easy kind of picky where he just won’t eat certain things. His picky goes on a rotation so that you never know the forbidden foods until it is too late. When I was working full time, we just went out to dinner or ordered in to accommodate his cyclical appetite. But now retirement has fueled the creative drive to put me behind the pots and pans once more. So our meal pow wows involve a whole lot of “will you eat…?”. But we make it through. It just adds to the game of designing decent meals with some nutritional content.
Another problem is coming up with ideas. I used to go to a convention called “The Cook and The Book”. It was held at a convention center that is about 30 minutes from home. You could pay your dues and walk through a maze of booths with people offering samples of their wares. Be it food, wine, candy or culinary expertise, you could find it here. So many people were so inventive. I wonder where they are now. But anyway, you could eat your way from one end to another easily taking care of lunch and dinner in little white soufflé cups of happiness. Only one trip left me sad and bitter. I got to sit in on a cooking demonstration by a rather famous chef who had her own tv show on a non network channel. It was about how to make risotto. I love risotto. It is a pain to make. This show was supposed to show me how to make it easily and so it wasn’t so scary. I was in the front row. The show progressed with the chef discussing how to make this dish from choosing the rice to technique. Claiming that it was so simple to pull this creamy, rice-y delight together in no time. While she was narrating, a team of two chefs were cooking and stirring their hearts out at the improvised kitchen behind her. It looked like they were working their butts off to make this dish. Stirring constantly and adding liquid at just the right time, the chefs created the “easy” recipe from her cookbook. Yeah, it is easy if I have two chefs making it for me! I was so disillusioned, we didn’t even get to see let alone try the finished product! At the end of the show, a herd of people popped up and began cleaning up the several pieces of cookware that the chefs had used. So now all I need is a team of chefs and bus people/dishwashers and I can create a delicious rice dish. For the record, I did NOT buy her cook book. I couldn’t afford the salaries for the team of food professionals to help make the “easy” recipes.
Another problem that clouds my cooking moments, is that every time I whip up one of my amazing meals…the weather turns awful. You know how in the cartoons a character would open the grill and clouds would come streaming in, when they close the grill…the clouds vanish. Same concept here. I have people who beg me not to cook before an event so that the weather will be good. Go figure. It may be my spices but I seem to open up this portal that exudes storm clouds when I cook. It’s an issue that I am trying to resolve.
So the chef in me will continue to evolve. Blazing new trails into a world d of foodie delights. Trying new things and accepting (not too difficult) challenges to bring flavor and fun to the table. But tonight we are having leftover pizza and Chinese. It’s all good.