#1

I’m a cook who believes in a meal, a family meal, the kind for which everyone comes to the table  and, by golly, they’d better enjoy themselves while they eat!  Everyone has always been happy to eat what I cook, but they’ve never been particularly interested in my method for getting it on the table, nor do they seem to appreciate, beyond how good the food is, the considerable meshing of time and effort that make my meals efficient as well as delicious. I think my talent is actually that, making it all come together, and so I’m launching a blog, in heavily-populated food blog Seattle, to explore that tenet. 

I hereby promise that if you keep checking back every two weeks, you’ll get another insight into maintaining an efficient kitchen and getting a meal on the table.

Since I moved from Kansas City to Seattle nine years ago, bringing my parents so that they could be local grandparents to my niece and nephew the way they were to my daughter as she was growing up in KC, I’ve been wrestling with “identity,” that kind of identity which earmarks one’s place in life, lets people categorize the talent you have and see if it helps them.  After all, we exist to help each other, in my book-of-life-as-it-should-be-lived, so I’ve spent 8 years now wondering where I was on that ladder. 

More specifically, I’ve been wondering who I’ll be after my parents are gone, because right now, my identity is closely tied with caregiving—thankfully, not on a live-in, daily basis, but, nevertheless, caregiving to parents.  About four years ago, I thought I had the answer.  I knew that one of my talents was cooking, and I had categorized myself as a “gourmet” cook for at least a decade before that, so I was primed to teach cooking.  After all, I’d been an English teacher and a librarian, and I clearly had a gift for teaching, as well as for getting a meal on the table, sometimes even in adverse circumstances, so I imagined myself teaching and planned how I’d do that and commissioned one of my daughter’s college colleagues to design the logo you see here.  I gave a few cooking lessons, never charging for them, because, after all, I was neither a culinary school graduate nor an expert on any type of cuisine.  And then, life happened, and I felt my contacts for free lessons run out, and I still couldn’t imagine charging anyone for this vast store of knowledge and instinct I seemed to possess.  

Why Supper Cook?  Supper is when the family gathers to be together after a day spread out across the world, and that is so whether or not the primary cook has left the house to work elsewhere during the day.  Supper is when you, as the cook, feel it’s time to start the prep work for the meal; you look out and the light has changed,  the sun moving down the sky the opposite of the way it streamed in your windows,  the birds chirping differently, than either did this morning. So, you pour yourself your evening drink, set out something that will serve as an appetizer to keep the wayward hands and queries out of your way while you cook, and then you cook, keeping in mind my first rule:  cook for yourself!

I cringe inwardly as I say this, because it sounds so selfish, particularly coming from a liberally guilt-ridden, but nevertheless, 80s feminist Baby Boomer with a WASP background.  But you won’t enjoy the process if there’s not something in it for you, so it actually doesn’t matter a whole lot that you’re cooking for kids who won’t eat anything but macaroni and cheese or someone with allergies.  You’re the one who needs to enjoy what goes on the table.  Eventually, you’ll make adjustments so that you can both please and provide the necessary for the other eaters, but if you don’t start with the idea that you’re cooking for you, it will never be any fun.  And it has to be fun, or there’s not any reason to do it.

This time, I think I’ll just share a good book which might make a difference for you, because it did for me, even though “Selfish Cooking” had already my ingrained philosophy for 20 years.   Look for What We Eat When We Eat Alone, by Deborah Madison and Patrick McFarlin (Gibbs-Smith, 2009), and read it with an eye turned to what pleases you in food, as did all of the people who responded to Madison when she asked them what they cook for pleasure and comfort.  You’ll discover what makes you tick in food—whether or not your only requirement is healthy food, or perhaps you need a starch to feel comforted and full, or maybe you just need your cooking result to be incredibly easy before you’ll make an attempt. 

Whatever you discover about yourself is fine, but adopt the stance that it’s all about you!  Nothing else matters.

Next time: my easy comfort protein which never fails.