Cooking

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Something in progress...God alone knows what it is going to be. 

I have a friend who use to say to her family each time she made a meal, it is the one millionth meal she has made for them. This started to run a bit thin with her audience, so her husband, who worked in the numbers arena, actually figured out it was more like the  hundred thousandths range.

Dispiriting to be found out so mercilessly, don't you think?

It does feel like the millionth meal. Sometimes even more.

I like to cook. I like to bake. Sometimes I even love to do both of these domestic tasks.



Take today for instance. I am in a high drive cooking mode. I have made so far this morning; potato leek soup. Kabocha Soup, (a squash we grew in our garden, and froze a zillion packets of, which I now feel over compelled to make something with it, I might be exaggerating on the actual count of packets), egg salad, and I am now taking a break before I start the bread to rise.

Hence, I am writing this ode to cooking.

Chocolate Cookies, of course.

I started cooking the meals for family when I was twelve years old. My mother went to work, and announced it would now be my responsibility to plan, shop, and make dinner. I was slightly acquainted with how to cook, I was very acquainted with cleaning up after others who had cooked, but planning was a new venue for me to enter.

One of my many brothers, purchased for me the cook book From Julia Child's Kitchen, and later the Joy of Cooking.  Both proved very useful for my entrance into the culinary world.  I realize in hindsight, these gifts to me were partly for him too, as my first attempts were checkered. My mother was such an old had at cooking, she had very few recipes written down.

Like the time I made meatballs and spaghetti, not knowing that a clove of garlic wasn't the entire bulb. The recipe called for two whole cloves of garlic. I stopped peeling after I have finished the first bulb, and thought, this is enough, surely they will not miss the other clove.

Tomatoes from last summer's garden. 

That evening, while we all seated around the table, my mother inquired of me, "how much garlic did you put in the meatballs?" I looked at her with shame as I relayed I had only put in the one clove as I was tired of peeling the little things.  This lead to further inquiry on her part, only to have revealed to me, a clove was one of these little individual things I had been peeling, for what seemed like forever.

My brother, the one who gave me the cook books, said dryly, "we won't need any heat in the house tonight".

I'm not sure how many meals I have actually made. Some days it truly feels like a million or more. Some days, I have zero, I repeat, zero inspiration, as I view the ingredients in my larder. Others, like today, I am inspired.

It is a gift, cooking for those we love. I have often felt like it is a tangible way to show how much these people mean to me. Watching them eat, and enjoy the food I have prepared gives me great joy.

As does the anticipation of their coming home to me,
at the end of the day.