the term wine-o just cracks me up. i just recently heard of it for the first time and suddenly everyone and their aunt jemima seems to be saying it! good times.
anyway, i'm not a whiner, either. i just have this little thing to say:
confession: i hate cooking. as far as i'm concerned, cooking can take a long walk off a short bridge. but not all cooking, because i love food cooked for me, i just refer to the cooking that i am asked to do. someday i'll find a homeboy that i want to spend the rest of my life nurturing and cooing over, but never cooking over. someday i'll have muffins of my own and i will love them more than myself, but not enough to cook for. it's the sad truth, or so i like to tell meredith, version 2008. but it's for their benefit! really! i'm no good at it. while a student at byu i went a full 8 months basically living on protein bars. by the end of it i was in desperate need of chlorophyll, but gee heck, i was alive and kicking and had a bit of muscle definition. then i went home for summer and sobered up a bit, thanks a la meri eaton's steady purchasing system in the produce department. but anyway my roommates that year of college had teased me that i'd settle down with a picket fence and when my husband came home from the office and my kids scampered in with dusty knees i'd be in an apron, unwrapping promax bars and placing them on plates, calling in a sing-song voice, "supper's readyyyyyy!" whichever roommate HADn't just told that joke (again) would chortle in agreement and i'd give a chuckle and think, "yeah? so??"
why do i stink at it? i don't know. i follow the instructions. i just don't have the....the cooker's wrist, shall we call it. those in the cooker's wrist club know how to drizzle olive oil, can knead bread dough, get the pit out of an avacado without destroying the edibles, know how often to turn over the grilling chicken without burning it and somehow making all the greased qualities you'd initially given the pan STAY AROUND so the chicken doesn't start to leach on to the teflon. *pant pant pant* i'm getting sweaty palms just remembering the last time i tried to grill chicken. and chicken i don't even want to eat. bleh. since most of the blogs i read are done by mommies sometimes i happen upon a post that has a detailed description of what dinner will be and my inner alarm system cries out in desperation, "ABORT ABORT ABORT." sigh. i'm sure it's all so very tasty, but the idea of actually preparing it in truth begins to make it start to repulse my stomach and taste buds. how can that be? i'm just...i'm just a mess is what i am. :)
it's something not unlike holding and/or burping a baby. i can do that. i can do an ok job as in i know to hold the head, i was initiated into the irvine babysitting brigade at age 11 (for other paying people...i suppose i was an eaton babysitter from the age of 6), i know how to keep them elevated and i know how to love love LOVE them to pieces. kinda like i know how to keep the rice from actually catching fire. but i don't have that MOMMY HOLD down and i don't have the method to make it taste MOUTHWATERING down. it's like as soon as you bring a baby home in a car seat you just KNOW how to hold a wee bairn so they not only love the crap out of you, but they are so comfy they could fall asleep in the middle of a "monster ballads" concert. i've seen it myself countless times. especially with elizabeth. in the 90s we'd go babysitting together and be about on the same level of infant-know-how-iness. but the day her first nugget was born i called her at the hospital and she was somehow...different. her voice was just different! my big sister had become even bigger, and before mine own ears! i love her for many reasons, one of the top ones being what a wonderful mummy she is, but it's something i won't be able to share with her for a while. we share almost everything else, except for kris jex and vegetarianism, but it's like she became a mommy and just KNOWS how to hold any baby now, the chip was implanted with the epidural or something positively sneaky like that. every baby, like every version of a spinach salad, is a bit different, but elizabeth could not only make every single one of the babies on earth sweetly secure in her arms, but she could martha stewart the spinach off every spinach salad posted on www.recipes.com.
how does one acquire the cooker's wrist? to h if i know, because my elizabeth-mom-chef theory is not a blanket one. rachel ray is not a mother and word on the street is she really knows what she's doing. in 30 minutes, even! that giadi gal was whipping up culinary perfection long before her baby girl was brung. it can't be limited to mommy-dom endowments of knowledge. practice? please don't tell me it's practice, because in that case i have been practicing for YEARS and it definitely is not making anywhere NEARLY near perfect. it's way below the equator of perfect. and i'm ten times more a ragamuffin than a perfectionist, but if i'm going to mess up my mascara by chopping onions, and if i'm going to handle dead animal innards for the ones i love, it better make their tastebuds sing a song of joyful satisfaction. so far all i've heard is crunching. slow crunching. i crunch reluctantly, as do they.
another thing: fruits? there. veggies? done. mother nature put them there in its fresh and delish form, throw it in the microwave with some water in the bowl or eat the apple and stop when you see seeds. humus? you buy it at the store or if you're in irvine and dad has a minute you throw chickpeas and other stuff in the quisinart and BAM! i'm happy with my limited abilities and feel nourished.
maybe the love i should at some point feel for a certain choice dude + spawn would be enough for me to at least try to move beyond humus and broccoli. i'm willing to consider the possibility. as for and until that moment, i'm 100% thrilled with the knowledge that my dinner tonight will be the product of the blood, sweat, and tears of some professional, and placed in front of me piping hot for my indulgence.
2 comments:
So I have been to your house on numerous occasions to enjoy some delectable treats made by yourself so this non cooking nonsense is just that.... nonsense! :) On other non related news, you're still the one (and only!) Honorary Life Rep. So please don't take offense by ones blog entry as it in no way was in replacement of your prestigious title. Hope all is well and we are so fighting!!! :)
i HATED cooking too. i still don't love it, but i've learned to live with it. eventually when more than one person depends on you for nourishment you'll come around. it's a waste of time cooking for one person. i didn't like it until we became friends with another couple who loved cooking and would have us over for gourmet dishes weekly. i started acquiring her recipes and before i knew it i was cooking real meals. i'd still rather have someone else prepare it for me at a restaurant, but i don't dread it how i used to.
and there is no innateness to mommying. when i had rylee my mom did everything for the first few days. i cried and cried when she left because i didn't know what to do to take care of a baby. all good things take time.
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