These days I have been swamped. It's my last year of university and I am finishing up with three classes each semester. I work two jobs, sit on three committees, and am applying to graduate school. Earlier this semester I played intramural rugby as well.
Very busy. I spend most of the time chained to my desk and it's honestly not a lot of fun. It certainly helps that I love my courses, and that I'm excited about graduate school (though also petrified, of whether or not I'll get in, of how much this is costing me, of how much it will cost me to go...), but honestly, it's really hard. This is where the food comes in.When I was younger, I didn't like cooking. Or at least, I didn't like the idea of cooking. I had this vibe where I tried to reject things I saw as girly, or feminine, and cooking was one of them. There was also the shunning of dresses, the abhorrence of pink (which continues), and so forth, though to be honest this whole business did not make a hell of a lot of sense because I still played with Barbies for a long time, and I did the makeup thing in grade seven. Anyway. Kitchen stuff was a no-go, unless it was microwaving something or making cookies with my mom. I could scramble my own eggs, that was a big deal. My sister and brother forbade me from making pancakes, though (I undercooked them). But that was about it for me and food.
However, early on in high school, I think in grade ten, I wanted to bring in cookies to class for some reason, for Christmas I think. And I made them myself, which I hadn't done before, with the same recipe Mom always made, which I will not share with you because she'll kill me*. Aaaaaaand I kinda got hooked. And I made cookies a lot more over the next few years. And when I started at UTSC I became known as The Cookie Lady on the old SCSU forum because I talked about my cookies. And we had cookie parties, forum meet-ups where we'd all bring cookies and it was good.
So yeah, baking pulled me into its sweet, delicious vortex and I have not come out since.
Cooking, however, has been a bit different. I got into cooking a bit back in second year when I was living with my dad, because he and my stepmom love cooking and love baking. Seriously, you should see the look my dad gets when he talks about cooking, his face just lights up and he gets all excited and lots of hand gestures and all that. They taught me some stuff that was very useful when I moved out and lived with a bunch of friends in a house across the street from campus for third year. At that point I was regularly making food for myself that wasn't prepackaged, although I still ate a fair bit of Kraft Dinner from time to time (but with broccoli in it! Yum!). It wasn't until the following summer that I really got into it.
The summer after third year I lived in a different house near campus, with my boyfriend at the time, Andy. It was just the two of us in this huge house, and it was a rather lovely summer, me working on campus, Andy writing and doing odd jobs (he's American, at the time he didn't have clearance to work in Canada) - and cooking. Andy loves to cook, almost as much as my dad. He is also extraordinarily good at grocery shopping on a very limited budget. One of his jobs was helping a book dealer move, and he got a whole bunch of cookbooks from her. We ate well and he taught me a lot that I took with me to residence when I moved there last year to take a position as a Residence Advisor.
I took up most of the kitchen in that townhouse, I admit it. Most of the drawers and cupboards had my stuff. I cooked a lot. I baked a lot. Ohhhh did I ever bake a lot. I got really into baking a huge range of things that year, from fancy cupcakes to delicious cookies to, most notably, cheesecake (including the deep dark chocolate cheesecake pictured here). I also made truffles, and squares, and various loaves.... yeah. Yum. That Christmas all I wanted was baking gear. I also learned to make dinner. Dad gave me his pasta sauce recipe and a lasagne dish for my birthday. Since then I haven't bought pre-made pasta sauce, and I make great lasagne. No more Kraft Dinner.
This year I'm getting deeper into these disciplines. I found this website called SuperCook, where you keep a list of all the ingredients you have and it tells you what you can make with them - awesome. I bake regularly, especially for special occasions. Over the past month I have even been baking bread, from scratch, in the oven, and it's good. My roommate Laura asked me if it was my life goal to make the apartment smell good at all times - sounds like a good goal to me. As well, my other roommate Jen and I get a Good Food Box from FoodShare every other week, which is always interesting and challenging. FoodShare puts together these boxes of local/organic/fair trade produce that they get in bulk and sell to the community at low prices. The small box that Jen and I get is $12 and lasts us just over a week or so. The catch is, you don't choose what's in the box - you get whatever's in season, and whatever it is FoodShare has on hand. That means we have had the opportunity to experiment and try a lot of things we hadn't before, like leeks and Swiss chard. Thankfully the box also comes with recipes! Unfortunately very few of them involve the giant heads of romaine lettuce that we seem to get in every box, and neither of us are terribly in to making lots of salads, so that often goes wilty and it makes us sad. But! We have made some delicious things. Potato leek soup, spinach & broccoli quiche,
squash soup, and lots of other yummy stuff. It is much fun.
Yes, it's hard work. It does take a fair bit of time, and yes I am still incredibly busy. But you know what? I deserve good food! So I'm going to make it! The process of making something is really therapeutic, and there's a great sense of accomplishment at the end. With all the other stuff I have going on, to take the time to make something good for myself, to chop, stir, mix, knead, saute, whatever, feels really, really good. It is my time out and my self-care - it doesn't feel like work at all. Being in the kitchen has really grounded me and kept me sane over the past few months.
Aaanyhoo. There was more I was going to say but I haven't thought through it all yet, and it's getting late and I need sleep. So this is all for tonight.
*Note to Mom: the recipe is in a cookbook, it's not all that secret! :-P
