Culinary Magic

Most people who know me also know that I am not a genius in the kitchen. In fact, I mostly despise cooking. Part of the reason for this is sheer laziness, but in addition to my preference for having other people cook for me, I find cooking to be very stressful. I do not know how to look in the fridge, pull some ingredients together and make something. I have to follow recipes and the recipes have to be explicit. A "pinch" of salt is not clear enough. I stress and worry that if I do not measure everything exactly, it will come out wrong. I have similar problems when I try to knit, which has resulted in my completely giving up the hobby. I know some people find cooking and knitting to be relaxing, but to me, they are two endeavors that make me want to pull my hair out. If I have a loose stitch in a scarf I'm knitting, I will unravel the whole thing until I fix the mistake. Other people think such blemishes are charming, to me they are endlessly frustrating. I am sure this says something about me as a person, but I like to think I am not this kind of crazy perfectionist in every area of my life...

Anyways, my new friend Debbie gave me cooking advice the other day. She told me that all good food starts with sauteed onions. This sounded reasonable to me, I love sauteed onions. She also said that I should pick foods of a variety of colors and put together ingredients I like. This is very little guidance, but for some reason, I decided to take a risk and go for it. Last night, I sauteed an onion and started adding things until I came out with a really delicious pasta sauce. I had never successfully made sauce from scratch with no recipe before and this sauce was so good that Neil must have said yum at least ten times while eating his bowl of gnocci. It was like a miracle. I threw this food in a frying pan and it turned into sauce. I am sure I sound ridiculous to those of you who can cook, but this was a major breakthrough for me. Who knows, I may even be ready to try improvised cooking again soon. So long recipes, hello culinary magician!