I'm not a crook!
Make that cook.
I come from a long line of really quite amazing cooks--my great-grandmother, mi abuelita, still makes some of the best spanish meals I've ever had, and she's well into her nineties, now. My grandmother was an adequate baker, and my mother runs the most messy, disorderly kitchen of any chef who ever turned out delicious herb-marinated artichokes.
Me? I make a mean piece of toast. I can boil you a bowl of ramen the likes of which you've never scooped. And that, my friends, was literally the scope of my expertise. In my late teens, I expanded into boxed macaroni and boxed rice-meals that forced me to learn how to turn on the burners for a frying pan. Finally in my early twenties, for Eric's sake, I learned eggs and bacon which, coupled with my mean piece of toast, meant I could cook a full meal. And then I lived alone and had absolutely no use for a kitchen except to go back to my ramen noodles (which at least kept me acquainted with a stove).
Forever changing my cooking life, Guy came along with his equal lack of skill and much larger appetite. I swear the man eats his own weight in groceries every week--where I was spending maybe forty dollars on groceries every two weeks, we now spend $80 EVERY WEEK. We used to eat out all the time, until our mutual financial situations took massive dives and we found ourselves needing to look at every aspect of our expenses and cutting back on everything from coffee to cable.
Thus, I have learned to cook. Granted, my range of skill is still limited, but my willingness to try new things is hampered only by our lack of household cooking necessities (such as spices and cooking implements). For example, for Easter I brought those deviled eggs to Fig's house; I've sauteed three different kinds of fish in the last two weeks, made a cilantro-lime rice dish, fried shrimp (we like seafood!) and I brewed a homemade ginger limeade with honey and a dash of lemon. I'm forgetting many meals, but I tell you they were delicious and I cooked them!
Okay, I'm no master chef. I'm not even sure, if I were to wear one of those "kiss the chef" aprons, that anyone would know to give me a peck. But I was secretly terrified for years that I would never be able to feed my family, and now at least I can have enough faith in myself to continue to learn this whole food-preparation thing.
By the way, I'm turning 27 in less than a month. I feel like I'm going to shrivel and die. Thirty is THREE YEARS AWAY. Is there even any point after that??? (Guy, at the ancient age of 37, tells me there is. Easy for a man who looks ten years younger to say.)
I come from a long line of really quite amazing cooks--my great-grandmother, mi abuelita, still makes some of the best spanish meals I've ever had, and she's well into her nineties, now. My grandmother was an adequate baker, and my mother runs the most messy, disorderly kitchen of any chef who ever turned out delicious herb-marinated artichokes.
Me? I make a mean piece of toast. I can boil you a bowl of ramen the likes of which you've never scooped. And that, my friends, was literally the scope of my expertise. In my late teens, I expanded into boxed macaroni and boxed rice-meals that forced me to learn how to turn on the burners for a frying pan. Finally in my early twenties, for Eric's sake, I learned eggs and bacon which, coupled with my mean piece of toast, meant I could cook a full meal. And then I lived alone and had absolutely no use for a kitchen except to go back to my ramen noodles (which at least kept me acquainted with a stove).
Forever changing my cooking life, Guy came along with his equal lack of skill and much larger appetite. I swear the man eats his own weight in groceries every week--where I was spending maybe forty dollars on groceries every two weeks, we now spend $80 EVERY WEEK. We used to eat out all the time, until our mutual financial situations took massive dives and we found ourselves needing to look at every aspect of our expenses and cutting back on everything from coffee to cable.
Thus, I have learned to cook. Granted, my range of skill is still limited, but my willingness to try new things is hampered only by our lack of household cooking necessities (such as spices and cooking implements). For example, for Easter I brought those deviled eggs to Fig's house; I've sauteed three different kinds of fish in the last two weeks, made a cilantro-lime rice dish, fried shrimp (we like seafood!) and I brewed a homemade ginger limeade with honey and a dash of lemon. I'm forgetting many meals, but I tell you they were delicious and I cooked them!
Okay, I'm no master chef. I'm not even sure, if I were to wear one of those "kiss the chef" aprons, that anyone would know to give me a peck. But I was secretly terrified for years that I would never be able to feed my family, and now at least I can have enough faith in myself to continue to learn this whole food-preparation thing.
By the way, I'm turning 27 in less than a month. I feel like I'm going to shrivel and die. Thirty is THREE YEARS AWAY. Is there even any point after that??? (Guy, at the ancient age of 37, tells me there is. Easy for a man who looks ten years younger to say.)