The Experimental Kitchen

As the weather gets colder, Justin and I have both been craving delicious hot meals. As the unemployed one of the two of us it is logical that I am the one who has been trying to learn how to provide for us what we crave (or what I crave and what he will hopefully like as well)...Throughout the years my cooking and baking experience has been minimal and slow to build based on the fact that my mom cooked everything for us growing up. I prepared frozen pizza, pasta-roni, and canned soups when I was babysitting, and occasionally I had to make my own lunch (sandwiches) before I went to work in high school. When I moved to college I always had a cafeteria or cook to provide meals. During law school, I ate mostly sandwiches and pasta with sauce from a jar or food from the school food court for the first two years until my third year when I decided to start preparing eggs and meat for myself for the first time (yes, I was 24 years old and had never purchased raw meat for myself at a store. Believe it or not.) Such habits can only go on so long, however...

Has anyone seen the documentary "Supersize Me"? It came out a few years ago (2004) and followed the adventures of a healthy man who decided to eat McDonald's food every day and reduce his activity level to that of an average American. The results were not good. He gained a lot of weight and his blood pressure and cholesteral went way up. I'll never forget the opening scene where he said:

"When I was growing up, my mother cooked dinner every single day. Almost all of my memories of her are in the kitchen. And we never ate out, only on those rare special occasions. Today, families do it all the time. And they're paying for it."

This is the way I grew up as well. Many of you probably did too. Now, of course all of my memories about my mom are not based around the kitchen, and I don't think it is the duty of moms (or dads) to sit in the kitchen and cook all day. We ate plenty of baskeball game pizza slices and had regular Schwann deliveries during my youth, but such indulgences are not the downfall of one's health (especially if you are a teenager who is playing basketball for several hours a day!). However, our kitchen was used daily and what we ate was generally baked and grilled, not fried and filled with preservatives. You can't deny the affect that restaurant dining and the consumption of processed food on a regular basis has had on people. Children are definitely getting heavier, where in the past weight would not become an issue until adulthood. Everyone knows the feeling of going on a trip or having a fun weekend where every meal is eaten in a restaurant. I know by the end, as delicious as the food is, I am ready eat anything as long as it isn't greasy, oversized and costly. I truly can't imagine the aftermath of this type of behavior on a regular, long term basis.

Anyway, the habits ingrained in childhood never went away and I've been experimenting more than ever in the kitchen (with the assisntance of some fun new equipment we recently unpacked from the wedding gift stash.) It's not as bad as I thought (even the part where I have to touch raw meat!). The only problem I have is that eating happens fast and cleaning is a big pain! It takes longer that the eating! We'll see how long it takes before I'm like a "mom" and can just produce meals or batches of cookies without looking at a recipe. (A long time, I'm afraid.)