It would be very nice if somehow it was on the record that I always wanted to be a cook. I loved to eat, it made sense I would love to cook. I remember as a child having access to one of those 1960s Betty Crocker cookbooks of simple meals & daydreaming about being able to make them. Alas, my mother was most definitely not a cook - she could make scrambled eggs, stews, & things from packages, & also fry meats, but that was about it. If a recipe needed a teaspoon, well, there was no teaspoon to be found anywhere in the house.
In eighth grade, I took a Home Economics class, & I liked the chemistry of cooking - I liked following the instructions of a recipe - & although most of what I remember of the class was sitting behind the "popular" boys as they ogled the "popular" girls, I might have found a calling somewhere if my home life had given me opportunities to actually make food.
But we were poor. Food was either pre-packaged or easy to make. Macaroni & cheese, hamburger helper, rice-a-roni. My mother was working much of my childhood, & my older siblings doubtless subsisted on fast food, so many meals came from cans. Or, when a pizza place opened in the neighborhood, were ordered in.
It wasn't really until college that I had to fend for myself & even then, it was meager & dumb. I became a vegetarian in the second month of college, & probably was the lamest vegetarian for several years after that. Macaroni & cheese played a huge part in my life, as did potato chips, & I ate a lot of Ranch Style Beans until, a year later, I discovered there was lard in the beans. Those are the pitfalls one must accept if one is to live in a meated society. Yeah, I coined a word! We live in a supergross meated society. You carnivorous fucks.
& though I toyed with veganism once or twice or thrice throughout the years, I didn't fully commit until a few years ago*. The wife & I found ourselves in a very inhospitable place (West Virginia) & deciding to commit to veganism (which I believe is a natural development of those who become vegetarian for ethical reasons), & I realized we would starve to death (or eat some pretty mediocre meals) if I didn't start cooking.
Now, I had cooked before. It had been novel, girlfriends had said, wow, I didn't know you could cook, etc. But most of the time I ate out: falafels, tofu, pizza, whatever. Learning to cook was a heavy thing.
The wife (as the girlfriend) had only a few recipes up her sleeve, & I started small: nachos, a black bean casserole, sweet potato burritos. But as time went on, I upped my game. I found recipes online & I bought cookbooks. I began to enjoy the process.
& never let it be said that I am a great chef. Here's how I consider myself: like someone in a cover band, who knows he or she will never be a great musician, learning how to play the songs someone else wrote**. I follow a lot of recipes, I sometimes vary, I sometimes add, but I have never made a recipe from scratch. I just don't have it in me, nor do I find it something that I want to do. If that makes any sense.
Did my eighteen year old self think my nearly fifty year old self would take a great of pleasure in cooking? I don't think so. Nor did my twenty-eight or thirty-eight year old self. By the way, when I am alone, I don't take much pleasure in cooking. Tonight the wife returned from a trip, I cooked for her, & I believe I enjoyed it more than I should've because she was there to enjoy it.
Maybe one day I can cook for you. That would be fun.
* I should mention that, though I became a vegetarian in September of 1986 as an unloved, barely kissed nerd of 18, nearly everyone since then imagines that the only reason I am a vegan or vegetarian is because of the woman I am dating at the time. It keeps happening - my wife tells me her colleagues believe I am vegan because she is.
** No disrespect to cover bands.
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