On Cooking

It’s no secret that my mom doesn’t cook. It’s not exactly that she CAN’T, it’s just that she doesn’t enjoy it…at all. Of course, she makes us food, but I wouldn’t call her a professional chef by any standard.

I, on the other hand, love to cook. I find it miraculous how a pile of mismatched ingredients can turn so scrumptious with the right amount of TLC. While guacamole continues to elude me, I make a mean cupcake and a tasty brownie.

But I’m hungry for more. Literally, and figuratively. I want to know how to stir fry vegetables into a tasty Asian combination that lights up my taste buds. I want to know the ins and outs of slicing and dicing, mixing, and stirring. I want to know what spices go with what meats and why should never serve orange juice with say, a hamburger. (Granted, that’s a given, but you get the idea.) I am no longer satisfied with grilled cheese and quesadillas and long to cook something bigger, better, but there is nobody who wants to show me how.

That’s why I bake. 

Baking doesn’t really have any prior skills necessary, as long as you can read a recipe and preheat an oven. Mostly, I bake from a Betty Crocker box, but I’m ready to venture through cookbooks and peruse online recipe lexicons. I want to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe, know how to frost a cake, and how long to stir the brownie batter. 

But that will only please me for so long. I’m ready to make dinner, to create the perfect salad, design the perfect soup. I’m hungry, hungry for more, and there’s nobody to feed me with knowledge.

But I’m still trying, still asking for help, still following a recipe BY THE LETTER. I want to experiment with ingredients and methods and EVERYTHING. Now I just need to make my mom teach me some things. :)