Winter break: No classes and no homework. The perfect time to sleep, watch terrible television, and eat delicious home cooked meals. This break, I decided to mix it up a bit, give my wonderful parents a rest, and try to make some of those delicious meals myself.
I’ve always loved to bake, and have been whipping up cakes, cookies, and scones with relative success for many a year. What could be so hard about cooking real food?
Turns out that a lot of it could be hard. With baking, all I really had to do was stir a few things together, pop a tray in the oven, and voila, I had a dessert! Cooking was a whole other story.
Whenever I would volunteer to cook, I had such pleasant expectations. Browse cute cooking blogs for recipes. Choose one with glowing reviews. Check the cupboard for ingredients. Prepare a delicious meal. Serve it to my smiling parents. Receive a round of applause.
Ha. Wishful thinking on my part. In reality, cooking for my family always turned into a huge ordeal. My first problem was that my menus were often too ambitious. Who doesn’t want to impress their family with culinary wizardry? I was taking an all or nothing approach: breads, pastas, sauces, unfamiliar vegetables—I wanted to do it all!
But however many servings the recipe promises to make? It’s wrong. You thought there were only ten steps? Check again. The recipe calls for buttermilk? Better start googling substitutes. You’ve been promised a short prep time? Multiply that by 32. Cooking time? Don’t trust it, unless you’re prepared to serve undercooked bread and burnt squash. Four burner stove? Trust me: you’ll want seven for all of those pans.
Seriously, I never knew that cooking could be such an emotional roller coaster ride, or that it could turn me into such an exhausted mess. You would think all of those episodes of Top Chef and Chopped would have prepared me a little better for this…
This whole experience has given me a lot of respect for my fellow students who are no longer on meal plan. Do they really go through this—the blood, sweat, and tears—every single day? Or do they just eat a ton of eggs, like I am planning to do next year? Either way, mad props to them for being so independent and self-sufficient.
I will also admit that while cooking was often torturous and always frustrating, it was extremely satisfying to feed people the fruits of my labors. Sometimes it was delicious (shout out to that amazing falafel recipe). Sometimes it was pretty inedible. But we never went hungry, and I’d like to think that even good cooks have bad days. So while I have hung up my chef hat for the time being (hello meal plan!), I’m not dreading the day I have to put it back on. Just don’t sign me up for a cooking competition any time soon!
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