K is for Kitchen

A garden bounty
Photo Credit: Doree Weller

I have a love-hate relationship with my kitchen.

The women in my family don’t cook. It’s not that we can’t; it’s just that we’re not really good at it. We’re bakers. My grandmother, mom, and I can bake anything, but we’re less consistent with meals. I’ve heard stories of my grandmother’s awful cooking. Fortunately, my dad mostly cooked, so I didn’t have to deal with my mom’s cooking often. As for me, I could make food, and it was usually edible. When my husband and I got married, we shared some of the cooking responsibility, but mostly we ate out a lot.

Flash forward many years, and because of some health issues, I decided that I needed to transition to a more vegetarian diet. That made it harder to eat out, and eating out kind of defeated the idea of eating healthier anyway. I expected to be an unimaginative cook when I first started cooking more, and I was. It wasn’t long before I got bored.

Thank goodness for Allrecipes, Chocolate Covered Katie, and Pinterest. Through them, I was able to broaden my repertoire of foods. Things got even better for me once I applied the same principles of baking to my cooking. It drives the husband crazy because I can seldom make anything the exact same way twice. I’m not much for exact measurements, and I almost always forget to follow recipes exactly. But they turn out well, so he can’t complain. Much.

Since I’ve learned to adapt what I make, I also love Pioneer Woman’s recipes. She’s a meat-eater, but with a little creativity, I can modify many of her recipes to suit my needs.

My gas cooking range, once intimidating, is now something I wouldn’t want to do without. These days, I’m actually known as a really good cook! Even meat-eaters like what I make.

Cooking still isn’t my favorite thing to do, but I don’t hate it anymore. These days, my kitchen and I get along just fine.

Be Careful What You Wish For

My former garden had some incredible veggies! That’s a 55 pound dog for reference!

I’m not fond of cooking.  The problem is that I like eating, I like knowing what is in my food, and I like high quality food.  When you add all that up, it means that I get to cook.  I really didn’t want to have to cook all the time, and fervently wished to eat other people’s cooking.

In the weeks leading up to my move, cooking got less and less feasible, as I was trying to make sure everything got done.  Then we drove to Texas over the course of two days.  By the time we pulled into Texas on Monday, I was ready to get set up and start cooking again.  The only problem was that my new refrigerator wasn’t set to be delivered until Thursday.  But I could live with a couple more days, right?

Then we found out that our fridge is apparently special order, and won’t be here until Tuesday!  So I have all of Labor Day weekend without a fridge!  We’ve been using a small cooler to keep a few things on hand, like coffee creamer and yogurt so that I have some breakfast, but I want salad.  And maybe some fajitas.  Lentil loaf with baked potatoes and asparagus sounds awfully good too!

I’m sorry I said I didn’t want to cook anymore, really.  I’m sorry I wished to eat food others made, really.  I promise, I’ll keep my mouth shut in the future!

(Okay, no, I probably won’t.)