As if this blog wasn’t an indication, I like to cook. I relish the time spent in the kitchen. I drool over cookbooks, pots, pans, plates, bowls, etc. Especially if they have floral designs. The kitchen really is my room, and I say this confidently because my better half still asks me where I keep certain things even though we’ve occupied the same apartment for over two years. He also still trips up on identifying a saucepan and I find that incredibly endearing. Never change, o better half of mine, never change.
More than the gadgets and gizmos and the other great stuff involved in cooking, it’s interacting with raw ingredients that makes my soul sing. Freshly picked fruits and vegetables are brightly colored, sweet smelling, wonderful to hold things that practically beg me to find tantalizing ways to use them before their stable life of 39.21 hours, give or take three minutes, expires. And boy, I sure try.
Case in point #1: this ruby red gala apple. I bought several at the farmers’ market with the humble intention of snacking on them with peanut butter. I have done this, with more peanut butter than I’m ashamed to admit. But look how divine this apple is! It would make a perfect crisp/cobbler/whatever you’re into. Too bad that it is near NINETY DEGREES in Upstate New York in late September and turning on the oven in a second story apartment would be suicide. And the fact that baking scares me.
Next is case in point #2: rainbow peppers! Do you see anything in these beauts? I see de-seeding them, which is close to the top on my “least favorite things to do in cooking.” Everyone has that list, right? At least I can rest assured that once they’re chopped, their colors will pop and play on the plate together, especially the sunset orange with emerald green. Maybe a salad. Or a veggie sandwich. I want so badly to dive into fall comfort foods, coming home to the sting of chili simmering in the crock-pot or feeling blanketed in a hearty casserole. But alas. NINETY. So I have nothing but crisp and cool on my mind.
I think for us humans, cooking is wired in our nature. Even as we have a tendency to turn to fast-food joints, take-out dinners, and microwavable boxes because of our crazy schedules, new shows about cooking pop up all the time. And we watch them. Professional chefs are superstars. And food porn is a very real phenomenon, hence all the Instagram accounts and blog sites focused on cooking, in some way or another. (Hi there.) Clearly cooking is on our minds.
My mom instilled in me many words of wisdom, one being “If you can read, you can cook.” She wasn’t referring to a five-course meal in downtown Manhattan. Fine dining has no place in the home of a 36-year old woman with four children ranging from newborn to 16. I was the newborn. (Sorry Mom!) But she did an amazing job, and I have many of her signature recipes in writing so I never forget, many of them featuring the vegetables and fruits she and Dad tended to in the backyard.
I snapped these pictures of Mom’s onions when I visited her this past weekend. Let me tell you the ways she uses them: salads, Italian sauce, Thanksgiving stuffing, sautéed over beef, barley soup, etc. One thing that distinguishes my mother is that she doesn’t let anything go to waste. She can grow. She can cook. And she is damn frugal.
But she’s also right (about nearly everything, she is Mom). For most of us, just trying to figure out what the heck we’re going to make for supper, all we need to start is the ability to read a recipe. This was, and still is, comforting to me because I would occasionally look at my mom’s lasagna or chicken and dumplings, thinking there was rocket science involved. No science (whew).
Confidence and finesse come later. When I started to cook on my own, I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing anything other than exactly what the recipe told me to do. You bet your butthole I carefully measured three cups of water until the liquid line was exactly on the same level as the measuring line. Watching chefs on TV “eyeball” amounts was excruciating for me. My palms sweat and I bit my nails in nervous horror. I needed more reassurance than that. What if I sneezed mid-pour and ended up with a whole container of chili powder in my soup? Then I would have to start all over, which I wouldn’t be able to do at all because I buy only what I need for any given meal. Therefore, I would be hungry and when I’m hungry, I’m cranky. So I would cry.
I’m less manic about measuring now. Unless I’m baking (Lord, help me if I am) or cooking grains/legumes/other things that require accurate ratios, I’m an eyeballer. I haven’t even sneezed once. It’s freeing and saves me from doing additional dishes. At this point, I look at recipes less as binding legal contracts and more as a set of guidelines that I usually tweak. Here’s the crazy part: I didn’t need professional training or manuals to gain this confident, creative liberty. It just happened with practice. If you’re afraid of failure in the kitchen, then you won’t go far. Not everything I’ve made has come out aesthetically pleasing or coherent or even appetizing. But I’ve learned from those mistakes. While I’m no Rachel Ray or Anne Burrell, I’m a pretty darn good home cook. All because I can read. (Thank you, Mom!)
The Farmers' Market Foodie 