I Like to Cook

I like to cook. I think it’s a necessity, and a selling point. I love a man who can cook and who I don’t have to worry about getting scurvy—my own brother concerned me on this front for years, and it’s only now that he’s married[1] that I worry a little bit less.

Now that I’m getting older and trying to make healthy choices,[2] I find that it’s kind of complicated to be learning these sorts of things, especially on the nights that I fail horribly.

Not too long ago I’d made some edamame pasta with a cream pesto sauce that I thought sounded pretty good. The sauce was in fact rather tasty, but the pasta itself was much like consuming a bowl of elderly shoelaces.[3]

I was glad at least that I only fed the pasta to one other person and not an entire dinner party, because it seemed to me then that said pasta was the sort of thing that you feed to people that you hate and assuredly would have left them all wondering.[4]

That’s the other thing too—so many of us have all of these unfathomable allergies now that how can you not know how to cook?[5] Sure we’re becoming wiser about feeding people with allergies and sensitivities, but wouldn’t you rather learn how to feed yourself well and that you prepared that food to a standard that you’re certain won’t make you sick?

I like that I can feed my friends and my visiting family and that I know how to turn a meal into a gluten or animal product free variation.[6]  

Sure, I’m no master at what I do. I burn things. I take forever to do the prep-work for a meal. I adlib where I shouldn’t and end up with a cornbread that’s more like masonry than baking. Yet I’m still proud of myself in the kitchen, of the things that I’ve learned to do over the years from the friends that were kind enough to teach me. It’s a skill, and one that, regardless of my sex, I am proud to possess.  

 [1] Not because she’s a woman and can cook for him—I get the sense that he does a bit of that now too—but because that means someone will be there should he collapse inside his basement suite and require medical attention.

[2] Which back in college meant vegan hotdogs and a pack of menthols, the latter doubled as mouthwash in my world.

[3] A girlfriend had recommended it too me, yet when I thought back to her exact words I recalled that she’d liked it because it had laxative-like qualities and at the time she’d been working to look model-thin in her wedding dress, something that she succeeded at no doubt because this pasta did exactly as she had stated and it tasted awful too.

[4] In fact, my boyfriend had suggested we buy a bunch, give it to my parents, tell them it was fabulous, and spend the trip home from their place laughing at the prank we’d pulled—though knowing my father’s allergies and the limited number of things he can actually consume they might have thought it was great.

[5] It’s my celiac girlfriend that I would say is the best cook I know. There’s nothing like having someone rock up to the bar at two in the morning, when you’re closing down and it’s just you and the bartender, to scare the shit out of you and drop off some gluten-free macaroons.

[6]I suspect that this learning curve is the only reason that I ended up dating a vegan for a very short time. We met at the grocery store and it turned out that he really did just want someone to cook for him. He was an ass, but without him I probably would’ve never learned how pillowy and delicious gnocchi can be in soup.