I Come From A Long Line of Mediocre Cooks

This morning I am thinking about my grandmother who was an indifferent cook, and my mother who was like her in that way, and now me.  So, I come by my aversion honestly.  But, the American Egoist™ in me wants to constantly improve, do better, is convinced that one day I'll get this cooking thing right.  Or die trying where you'll find me standing at the stove in my apron.  (Heh.)  Yes, the semester is coming to the end and I can imagine a life that's comprised of more than hoovering up black strokes on white paper trying to coerce my 63 year old working memory to hold on to this pleez for a few more weeks.  And so thoughts turn to food and gardening and quilting.

Last Sunday I thought it was Saturday, which is why I posted Saturday Poetry without irony, and without realizing the mistake until I was jumping up and down in my own kitchen arguing with Cuthbert and Kim that "No, it's not Sunday.  It's Saturday and I have another day!!!"  Alas, they were right and I was wrong, and it was good I found out when I did instead of not showering or showing up for work as is my habit on the weekend.

I like food.  I really do.  But I have not yet made an enduring bond between my like and appreciation and the production of such.  I've written before and I'll write again about looking at cookbooks, being inspired, knowing much of what there is to know about the connections between good nutrition and good health.  I'm old enough (and beat up enough) to know that my survival depends on what and how much I consume from here on out.  I am in awe of cooks; I love to watch people being fed well and with love.  I love the sound of infants eating because they eat with their body and soul and they make such wonderful noises as they feed.  I can organize a great dinner party.  I so much want to be one of those people, those let-me-whip-a-little-somthin-somthin-up-for-you-while-we're-waiting people when I grow up and yet.  And yet.  My aversion to cooking is so bad that I'd eat a spoonful of raw ground beef (not even shaped into beef tartare nor adorned with an egg) before I'd boil water for pasta.

Perhaps I should be counter-intuitive about this and take a class, let my competitive nature kick in  and actually cook because I want to be the best in show?  Maybe that would get me to cook.  Don't know; not sure.  Every August when Cuthbert goes home I have to fend for myself, and if ever I cook on a regular basis, it's then.  I'll wait to see if anything changes.  If it doesn't expect a post:  You're Not Going to Eat That, Are You?

School's almost over.  The garden beckons.  Ciao bella.

This Will Be Brief ...

... because -- you know -- I've got systems of linear equations to solve.

A snapshot of my life:

1.  This is my month off as a wife.  Cuthbert is visiting the family in Ireland.  This means several things -- I have to cook for myself, I'm the head Home Skooler for Lilli, the house stays, if not immaculate, at least tidy and clean, and I don't have to use my we're-in-the-middle-of-a-firefight voice.

2.  Three times a week I meet Lilli at the bus stop and we snack, read and learn.  She is doing a traffic study.  We go to the grassy knoll and she counts cars at rush hour.  Each expedition she chooses a different color -- first day red, next time gray, and so on.  She records the day, date and time and the number of cars of a certain color that passed by in 5 minutes.  When she is done with fieldwork we'll look at the data and construct a pie chart or a bar graph.

3.  This week the daily temperatures went from the low 90's to the 70's.  I suffer from summer PTSD.  The hotter it gets the more I hate life.

4.  I am cooking.  Easy stuff that I can do.  Today, having been brave and and thawed a packet of pollock.  (What a great title -- A Packet of Pollock, A Gaggle of Geese) I'm all in for cooking.  Even found an easy recipe.  So as not to repeat the fiasco of a September past I will stay in the kitchen and study while the fish broils.  I'm slow, but I do learn.  If it's good I'll ask L&L to come over for dinner.  If not, well those goddamn feral cats that use my backyard as a litter box will get their version of The French Laundry.  Anyway, what do I care?  There's always popcorn.

5.  As Cuthbert predicted, New Haven's mayoral primary was decided along tribal lines.  Tribes of race and class.  Reminds me that this is essentially a very conservative town.  What I wouldn't give to be a NYC voter right now!  Crazy Anthony Weiner?  Bill Blasé-Former-President-of-the-NYC-Board-of-Education-Warmed-Over-Placeholder Thompson?  Bill de Blasio who's got a son who looks like what Michael Jackson should have looked like at 16?  Christine-I-Woulda-Been-A-Better-Fireman Quinn?  What's not to love about that field?!?!?!

So it's study, class, gym, home, cook, clean, iron and sleep.  A quiet life.  Ciao, bella!

Garbo Cooks

Yes.  I surprise myself in this soon to end month of Bachelorettehood.  I have cooked, and eaten the results.  But, more important than that I have actually devoted mental energy into figuring out how to cook what I cook better.  This is all so new for me, I blush.  It helps that it's fall and there are great vegetables nearby.  I am agnostic about what I prepare.  Yesterday, I was making spaghetti sauce and almost sauteed a spider who lived in one of our iron skillets.  (Makes me look bad, if not a liar, no?)  I said almost.

Anyway, I plan to keep this up.  Hell, I need a win.  Ye Olde Math Class is giving me, if not quite nightmares, anxious dreams.  It is phenomenally beautiful and unusually warm these days, but I am in a permanent state of crankiness and misanthropy.  And, why, you may ask?  Okay, help me with this:

Prove or disprove the following statement:

There exist rational numbers a and b such that a^b is irrational.

 If you can't, leave me alone.  I'm off to look up some fish recipes.  I hear fish helps.




 

You Foodies Get on my Last Nerve

Anybody who's known me for more than a minute knows that 1) I don't like to cook and 2) I can't cook.  (I wrote last year about what happens in my family when I just suggest that I might want to make dinner.)  I won't go into my every-dysfunctional-family-is-dysfunctional-in-its-own-way creation myth.  After all these years, I'm not sure it's relevant and I'm always one for giving friends and family the unsolicited advice that they can overcome this and overcome that.  Obviously, cooking will forever be in the "why bother?" column for me and it's high time I admit it.

Yet, I can't quite get over the knawing (to use a masticatory word) feeling that not wanting to or liking to cook is a moral failing.  And like any culinary doubter, I go back and forth about the existence of a benevolent Home Chef.  Godknows I've had bursts of energy where I think I'm finally going to have 2 skillets going at 6 o'clock 5 days a week.  But then I go back to watching potatoes sprout, fresh basil go to seed, and ground turkey turn green.

So, when I tell you that Husband No. 1 who, as you may remember, loves to cook, does it extraordinarily well and never finishes a meal without saying to no one in particular, "Damn, that's good!" to which he gets a chorus of amens and splayed mashed potatoes, when I tell you that he went out and bought 4 fish from the fish market and cooked 3 -- what would Jesus do? -- and there was one fish left in the refrigerator and my better angels got to me and told me to do something with it before the whole house caved in from the smell, you know this will be a story without a happy ending.

Some context:  I am back in school a mere 30 years since I got my one and only degree.  I am taking Calculus.  As with too many momentous decisions in my life I did not think this through.  This summer when I was digging flower beds, sharpening knives, quaffing Jameson's and bitching about my legs turning into tree trunks, I should have been reviewing pre-Calculus and trig and throw in some algebra while yer at it.  For the one class that I'm taking now is truly and unremittingly kicking my ass.  I mean, I had to purchase a graphing calculator that's got a 400 page manual fer chrissakes.  Mercy.


Ye Olde Student is now always in a panicked hurry.  The other day I was home alone, and for those who enjoy that kind of thing, you know that you get into The Zone.  Floating through your own space multi-tasking, focussed, efficient.  I decided to cook the last fish thinking, I'll surprise everyone!  They'll get home today and instead of seeing empty potato chip bags strewn all over the kitchen they'll see demurely crossed cutlery and a plate cleaned of everything but fish tail sitting on the kitchen table, the remnants of a Healthy Home-Cooked Meal.  Oh my, they'll say, that woman can do anything!  So, I glide through the kitchen, pre-heat the oven, spray the pyrex, salt the dish, chop some onions, add a dollop of oil and juice while opening my mail and starting a fresh pot of decaf -- Oh Julia, I said to myself, you are too much!


Then I marched out to my office to do battle with some polynomials.  For one whole hour.


When I smugly waltzed back into the kitchen it stank like a trawler.  And when I opened the oven and took It out It was black.  (I see a red door and I want it painted black ...)  The onion had turned into something that resembled a bouillon cube and what was supposed to be baked fish looked like a cheap shoe left out in the rain.  Why bother to open all the windows, I reasoned, just fess up when they get home.

I did.  (My lame excuse was that I bake chicken for about an hour.)  And then I had to sit there while Younger Sister and Husband No. 1 popped their eyes back into their respective heads and lectured me about the difference between a few minutes and one hour.  (Will this be on the test?)  Now, of course, I will never hear the end of it and come Thanksgiving right after the obligatory, "Damn, that's good!" there will be, "Did I ever tell you the time She (thumbs jerked in my direction while I keep my head down and shovel brussels sprouts in my mouth) tried to cook fish?"


It's official:  I give up.  Just FedEx me home-cooked meals.