The Trouble with Cooking

The trouble with cooking is not slicing, dicing, or julienne-ing. The trouble with cooking is not the mountain of dirty dishes. The trouble with cooking is not the extra time required to plan a menu. The trouble with cooking is not sourcing quality ingredients. The trouble with cooking is not even really the physical work that goes into it. The trouble with cooking is not that it is dead, like Harry. (Go rent a bunch of Alfred Hitchcock movies if you missed that reference.)

The trouble with cooking is that it spoils you for mediocrity. Once you have had a perfect salad dressing that is little more than a squeeze of a ripe lemon with some fresh garlic and good olive oil, you have no tolerance for Paul Newman's greasy chemicals. Once you have baked your own bread, or become accustomed to the products of your local artisan baker, then that fluffy, cake-like garbage the grocery stores try to pass off in the "bread" aisle is anathema to you. And unless they really put in their own special touch, you'd just rather make your own pizza. The real trouble with cooking is, in fact, that it makes you an insufferable food snob.

You can likely well imagine that the days preceding holidays can be busy ones for a cook, and I am one gratefully busy bee this week. I was busy enough that I thought we'd just have to have some sub-standard dinners for a couple nights this week...you know, a frozen this, an instant that--I hardly ever let us eat like that, but there are only so many hours in a day and most of them are already spoken for!

But there I was, walking down the frozen food aisle of my local grocer, and I just choked. Nope. I KNOW those entrees are a disappointment. Nope. Those over there are so unhealthy it's frightening. Ooof! Look at that! Who buys some of this stuff?!!

Insufferable food snob that I am, I just couldn't do it.

Crap. I'll just have to cook.

I DID cheat a little and used some store-bought bread dough for our weekly bread. The loaf is still cooling, and I'm sure it will be just fine, but *sigh*...it doesn't look like it has my crispy crust.

Tonight's dinner was a bit of a "pantry dump" (you know, when I look for whatever is on hand and "invent" an entree) Although it was born out of necessity and convenience, the savory garlic-chicken cheesecake I came up with may have to go into the regular rotation.

I just can't eat that Taco Hell, or increasingly, I can't eat anything that wasn't made with some degree of care and focus.

So the trouble with cooking is that you have to keep doing it!