Cooking and Me

I am a relatively decent cook. Most of the feedback that I’ve received on my cooking tends to be fairly upbeat. This would, in large part, be due to the fact that the audience I cater to is quite lenient a judge, has no fancy tastes and is rather partial toward me. In other words, I’m the only one who eats what I cook.

I don’t really like cooking for others. I feel there’s too much pressure to get it right. This is why I like to put up a disclaimer before I start to cook anything, saying “This will not taste anything like what you expect it to. If you are still okay with eating it, let me know now, otherwise I am counting you out.” Most people wisely choose to abstain. Besides no one can ever be really sure exactly what someone like me might slip into the dish, and since most people I know avoid—almost religiously—some item of food or the other, they wouldn’t want to risk eating anything coming from my hands. All this, of course, suits me just fine. I cook, I eat.

I find cooking to be somewhat boring. I cook almost exclusively because I have to eat and am too broke or too lazy to order in or go out. So if I have to cook, here’s what I do—I pretend like I’m hosting my own little cook show. I imagine there’s a studio audience in front of me, three or four cameras around the place, a nice little hat on my head (still imagining, I don’t wear one for real!) and maybe even a surprise guest every so often. Sometimes I’ll pretend like I’m the guest on someone else’s show.

So as I’m throwing in the ingredients, I’ll look up and speak to the audience. I’ll try to do different accents on different days, just to make things a little more interesting. I like to toss the stuff in the pan up in the air every now and then. These days, it often falls right back in too! (Who says I can’t learn!)

Then, when it’s all ready and over I’ll sample it. It normally tastes worse than dog turds in mud, but I’ll somehow manage to put a brave, almost satisfied, expression on my face and go, “Wow! That is just simply dee-li-cious!”

I figure I’m a good showman but a bad cook. Heck, isn’t that exactly what they need for these shows? Maybe, I should apply for one. Hmmm.