Hating Cooking

         I don’t like cooking.  If I lived by myself, my kitchen would look like the Seinfeld set kitchen.  All cereal, all the time.  And, it’s not that I love cereal, it’s the fact that you don’t have to cook it that I adore.  I like good food.  I love great food.  If only I could have a wonderful meal every night.  [Wistful sigh] It just feels like sooo much work if I have to make it.  Dicey as it is, I am delighted to eat cafeteria food or even hospital food; because someone else is making it.  (And there are always rolls and butter to fill me up if it’s horrendous.)  I even looked forward to going to the hospital to have my babies because people were going to bring me the food.  I wouldn’t even have to get up. Bonus!

         I know there are people out there who love to cook because I see them on the food channel.  But do they really like cooking?  I am not convinced.  I think it’s their bubbling personalities and witty talk or their personification of some specific type of culinary “style” that actually got them the job.  Maybe I don’t have that kind of flair but I could totally pretend to love cooking, and might even actually like it, on a TV show.  If I had someone to shop for the food, wash, measure, chop, prep and clean up after me, I would adore cooking!  I have a double oven and whenever I put a dish into it I open up the other door.  There has never been a finished version ready to eat but somehow I keep hoping….

         I do enjoy baking.  Of course, the end product is so much yummier and satisfying to my sweet tooth. (Tooth thanks to growing up with Little Debbie snack cakes.)  I also think it is so much easier for my brain to cope with baking.  There may be a bunch of steps but usually they happen only one at a time and one right after another.  You follow the recipe and that’s it.  No riffing allowed.  You divert from the specified amount and ingredients and you have a flat, tasteless doorstop; so you don’t divert.

         With cooking, there is too much waiting.  For example, a recipe instructs: sauté the onions.  While waiting for them to start cooking, I pick up Time mag and start reading.  Shit, I burned the onions.  I wipe out the pan and start over.  Ok, this time I pay attention and don’t burn the onions but then I have to reduce something.  Boring.  I start reading again and suddenly the pan is gluey and nearly dry.  Arg!!!         My problem is my low interest level and a short attention span.  Too much time between steps and I drift off.  When that happens, it’s a miracle if the end result is edible.  Add ambiguity and I am done for.  What do I mean- ambiguity?  “Sauté until soft. “ or “Stir until thickened.”  Hello?  How long please?  If I can’t set a timer to rouse me from the coma this recipe put me in, it’s all over with.  

         I probably should only attempt recipes that go into the oven (Timer!) and avoid all that involve the stovetop.  That seems to be where it always goes wrong.  Whenever dinner starts on the stovetop it seems to end as just another night that I wind up serving sandwiches (or cereal!) and fruit with the accompanying whiff of scorched matter rising from the garbage pail.  All while my Real Simple magazine perches disapprovingly on the counter….