This post is for
apgeeksout, who asked about my favorite dishes to prepare and to eat, and for
schneefink, who also asked me about cooking.
To be honest, I have a love/hate affair with cooking. On one hand, nothing makes me feel so much like an accomplished, able adult than pulling something solid and filling out of the oven or off the stove burner. It comes with a sense of well-being, of providing and being provided for. When I dish up a bowl of soup on a cold day and eat it while looking out the dining room window at gray sky and stark empty branches, I feel a sense of being in the right place, of belonging in the space and time I occupy that I don't get in the same way from any other thing.
On the other hand, I don't actually like doing it very much!
ghostyouknow27 and I frequently lament the fact that we have to eat at all. It's such a pain! I especially hate the uncertainty of trying new recipes, of spend an afternoon on something not even sure I'm doing it right, much less whether I'll enjoy the results even if I
have done everything right. Plus everything takes longer when you cook something new.
I enjoy cooking recipes I know well a little more, though. I cycle through the main season-appropriate recipes I know and like until I get tired of them. Right now there's a lot of corn/beef/bean casserole with Fritos, potato soup, oven-fried chicken plus side, and oatmeal with either peanut butter or apple sauce. Pretty soon I'll be roasting a lot of yams, too. I love yams.
Probably one of my favorite recipes to eat is beef stew, but that one is a ton of work no matter how many times I do it. Those of you who knew me while I was in Honduras may remember the housemate; one of the many reasons I loved living with her was that she was totally willing to dredge and brown the meat if I'd do the rest. IT WAS GREAT. Dredging/browning is
so messy and
so boring and takes forever.
And if you're going to have stew, you also have to have biscuits. I use a recipe I got from my dad, who got it from
Modern Cooking, published in the 60s with a distinct and amusing housewifely vibe to it. The biscuits are delish, though. And if you end up with more biscuits than you have stew, you can spread the remainders with butter and homemade strawberry freezer jam, which incidentally is what God made freezers for. YUM.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. (
DW replies)