Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Chef Cheryl is back in the house (#iPPP)

In my late 20s I found that I had a small love of cooking - not a big one, mind you. You wouldn't see me in the kitchen for five hours preparing a gourmet meal, but making a dish that would gather people around the table and make them "mmm" was surprisingly satisfying to me. After marriage, I liked cooking even more, now that my mismatched college collection of dishes was gone and I had real pots and pans and gadgets with which to play, now that my dollhouse-sized kitchen grew into a real kitchen. Like any good Jewish woman, I'd make army-sized portions, even when it was just the two of us at the table (which we only ate at during the first year of marriage; now we eat at the coffee table). I would pour over cookbooks and magazines, was always eager to try something new, and got a thrill making an edible concoction out of nothing (I would have been a great Depression-era cook).

Then we moved into an apartment, back into a kitchen the size of a shoebox, and my love of cooking started to dwindle. Add to that the fact that I had begun working outside the home again, and the microwave became my most frequently used cooking appliance. Our pantry was bare, but boy was our freezer full!

This non-cooking phase has lasted an embarrassingly long time, but thanks to my recent obsessions with Pinterest and MasterChef, the longing to cook has come back. "So domestic," I again became in the kitchen this week, with homemade egg salad, fried rice, tuna croquettes, and crockpot ranch potatoes.

I didn't realize until posting these that I made all boring colored food this week. Hmph.
I'm not the only one who Instagrams (has that become a verb yet?) what she eats, right?

A MasterChef, I'll never be (I'm lucky when I don't ruin spaghetti). But as someone who lives to eat, I'm thankful my apron is finally finding its way back around my neck.

GFunkified

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Boring colored food usually means comfort food, and I am so down with that!

Gimme those potatoes.

Greta @gfunkified said...

Those look delish, and I love how you described your transitions.

I may have been almost in tears last night, nearly running a pot of spaghetti. I'm not proud...i usually do better than that!!

Fritter said...

lol @ 'boring colored food'. My husband loves that sort of thing- bright colors scare him :)

Unknown said...

Both of those look delicious to me! Most of the boring colored foods are the starches I can't get enough of :)

Brittany said...

You would think a stay at home mom would be the epitome of domestication hehe, but I'm just as guilty as you've been with the microwave as my #1 means of cooking.
This post has semi-inspired (because I'm still a horrible cook lol) me to make something new and maybe dust(yes...dust) off my crockpot. So Thanx and btw the food looks yummy ^_^.

Jamie Miles said...

Cooking is so much fun...but it's so much work. I guess if you really love it, it's not work. And I really think it is the time involved to make something from scratch. Though I have been trying more this summer with such great things available from my garden. Keep cooking...

Jessica said...

I Instagram what I drink. That's close enough to what I eat, right?

Mrs4444 said...

Awesome! I, too, have been inspired by Pinterest to cook some new dishes. When we went camping last weekend, I made cilantro lime chicken tacos that were delicious. Made two other flops, though; I might need to make a "Recipe Rejects" board.

btw, I love the social media footer on your blog posts. It looks a little like mine, only better. Is it new?

Amanda @ It's Blogworthy said...

Crock pot ranch potatoes?? You had me at ranch.