a necessary rant

ok, you know what?  I'm just really tired of being seriously intimidated by cooking.  I'm sitting here drinking too cold merlot because it was that bad.  It IS that bad. 

I have a bad relationship with food.  Not in the binge sort of way. Or the starve myself sort of way.  More like the its an inconvenient necessity sort of way.  I'm annoyed by food, the preparation of it, the time it takes out of my day, the sitting there eating it while everyone complains.  Oh that gets me....

Anyway, I've been saying for a long time that I need to work through my cooking issues.

Cooking for me = griping, complaining, a bunch of unappreciated work, not having one ingredient, anxiety, way too much time, stress, interruptions, f-word inducing frustration, a lot of clean up, exhaustion. 

My friend Adriana (who likes to cook) told me the other day, "you know what?  The conditions you were under when you learned to cook would make cooking terrible for anyone."  What do you mean, I say?  "Well, you didn't know a thing.  You got married and had a baby right away.  No money and a million other stresses.  That takes all the fun out of it."  She learned to cook while she lived on her own.  by herself.  What in the world is that like?  deep breath...

Anyway, so I think she's on to something, because I had an epiphany right then and there.  What if I were to figure out all the things that stress me out about cooking and try to either eliminate them, overcome them or otherwise work around them?

A couple days after I talked with A, I came across a blog: Tongue in Cheek.  It is absolutely beautiful.  The woman blogs about her experiences living in France for the past twenty years.  I was so inspired.  In France, eating is dining and its a thing of beauty.  I understand that culturally, Americans eat for fuel not for the pleasure of it.  But maybe, I can aspire to the French way?

So tonight...armed with my new inspiration I decided to try to whip something up using what I had on hand.  Something I hear foodies say they do all the time.  I only have a few things on hand because I also hate to go to the grocery store.

Going to the grocery store = making a list, which means I have to make a menu, which stresses me out because coming up with one meal is bad enough, much less multiple meals..., taking 2 wonderful, but rowdy boys to the store, not being able to think, getting home and realizing that I forgot x number of things, which means I need to go back, losing the list that I wrote my menu on, not being able to remember what I just bought all this fricking food for because I'm so stressed out by the whole cooking thing that I completely blocked out the whole menu writing process so I have no idea what I'm supposed to make for dinner tonight.  fishsticks again? 

So tonight, I decided to make a frittata with sundried tomatoes, black olives and parmesan.  I also decided to make latkes because I had potatoes and onions and Adriana had just showed me how to make them for Hanukkah. 

That's when the panic set in.  The boys aren't going to eat this.  Shit.  I can't deal with complaining at 8:00pm.  But then, I caught myself.  Wait.  I think that sounds great.  So, heckfire, I'm making it.  That's when my brilliant plan came into my not so brilliant brain.  I'll make fishsticks for the kids.  I'll make the frittata for me.  I'll make fishsticks and other icky bland, gross food (+ a vegetable, of course) for them every night.  And I'll explore cooking for myself every night if it kills me dammit.

So, I acted on this brilliant plan.  I threw the fishsticks into the oven and proceeded to grate cheese, pit olives and dried the tomatoes in the sun.  I grate potatoes and onions. I add flour and corn meal just because that sounds like something a real foodie would do.  Then reality struck.  The mousetrap game is missing a piece.  (Who made that flipping game? I want to ring their neck).  There was fighting.  The birthday lego airplane has been mysteriously destroyed, wailing ensues.  Too much humming, more fighting.  I can't even beat some eggs.  And I say to myself, "this is why I don't cook.  Right here."  Really.  How am I supposed to pay attention to what's on the stove when there's a riot in my living room?  My visions of happily (fishstick fed) children playing happily while I casually stand by the stove drinking my red wine went up in the smoke of my now too hot vegetable oil in my iron skillet.  What was I thinking?

I casted my face toward heaven and shed a little tear, growled my frustrations and decided right then and there (in a very Scarlett O'Hara fist shaking sort of way), that I will do this.  Even if I have to feed my kids fishsticks every night and scream fiddlesticks because I'm really trying to cut back on the other f word, I will learn how to enjoy cooking.  I don't envision myself becoming a card carrying foodie, but I do want to see food as more than an annoyance to be endured.  I'd like to enjoy the pleasure of all the things that make a meal beautiful: preparing, cooking, savoring even if it means I spend all of my time failing forward.

Now that I've had my little rant, I'm going to enjoy the last bit of my wine that's finally at an acceptable temperature.  Here's to my messy kitchen and the victory that tonight's failure is for me.