Because I look at numbers all day, I don't feel like my creative side ever really gets to come out at work. I slightly envy people who get to combine a career with creativity. One of the main ways I try to offset this problem is through cooking. No matter how tired I am when I get home from work and finish working out, tending to pets and doing laundry, I still love to cook dinner. Sometimes this is frustrating, because I'm not good at judging how long a dish might take. Many recipes give you an estimated cooking time, but I never remember to look at this important figure before embarking on my cooking journey. We usually don't end up eating dinner until 8:00 or 8:30, which I know is very unhealthy. I've tried to just do canned soup or something simple, but this just doesn't do it for me. I enjoy a show on The Food Network called "30-Minute Meals" with a perky little hostess named Rachel Ray. She makes everything look so easy! She just grabs things from her refrigerator and pantry and Wham Bam Boom - instant Mushroom Risotto, Baked Clams and Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake. Yeah, right. If I had a staff that only stocked whatever I needed for that night in my refrigerator and pantry, and pre-washed all the vegetables and fruits, I'd be perky too!!
My brother has also developed a love for cooking, and we have long conversations about his homemade tarter sauce and version of Nana's (our grandmother's) potroast, or my smoked turkey sandwiches with roasted red pepper pesto and caramalized onions. When we talk like this, my Mom looks at us like aliens abducted us at some point during our childhood. She has never really gotten into cooking (even though after my brother moved out,she always managed to make a big home-cooked meal for him if he came for dinner). This causes us to ponder over whether there is a "cooking gene" that maybe skips generations. Whatever causes it, it will keep driving me to stand in the kitchen for an hour every evening, with my head bent over a cookbook, chopping and stirring in my non-perky way, but to my heart's content. Thank goodness my husband is sweet enough to do the dishes every night (even without a dishwasher).
5 comments:
Oh, that's a great thought about the cooking gene skipping a generation. My mom doesn't like to cook at all, and I just realized last Wednesday that cooking is my absolute favorite hobby. What opened my eyes was that I was excited about reading the new Tom Thumb sale flyer for the week so I could plan what I wanted to cook. And Jim doesn't understand how I can sit any time of day and read my Cooking Light and go on and on about what I want to make.
I just read my first Cooks Illustrated magazine and I'm about to get a subscription to that too. If you haven't seen it, it's kind of a cross between Consumer Reports and a how-to manual for cooking.
Take it from a guy who gets to combine career and creativity; it’s not all it's cracked up to be. Just imagine spending hours planning and cooking a great meal only to have your husband (who secretly wants to be a cook) tell you that he thinks it would be better to take some ingredients from the salad, some from the entree and some from the dessert and mix them all together before he'll eat it. Then imagine he makes you do it all in half the time you actually need to do a good job. That'll give you some idea of the joy of working with "clients".
I also look forward to writing up my weekly menu and subsequent grocery list for each week. What do they write Consumer Reports on in Cooks Illustrated - blenders? OK, Jim, your very descriptive analogy makes me reiterate that I'm only slightly envious. That would probably make me cry. Every day. I also have finally realized that I don't want to cook for a living, because I'd probably start to hate it and after awhile I'd wish I had a job working with numbers again.
They actually compared pastry blenders in the issue I had (the handheld ones - wire vs blade). And I think they test drove some new OXO peeler.
I too have decided that cooking for a living probably wouldn't be all it cracked up to be. I came to the same conclusion that I'd probably hate cooking after a while.
I like cooking too, my husband and I like to try different things we look up on the Internet.
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