Cooking. It’s complicated. I’m not a foodie. I wouldn’t mind being married to one. But Kory isn’t a foodie. We call our youngest Mini Foodie because he loves to try new foods, but he’s only 7, and black olives are not a meal.
I kind of like to cook, but I think I need to go on a journey of cooking self-discovery. This is a nice way of saying I wish all the opinionated members of our household would find alternate methods of nourishment.
As far as my cooking heritage, I was raised by a recipe-follower, my grandmother, and the queen of improvisation, my mother. This has made me a schizophrenic cook. I tend to follow recipes when we’re having guests over for dinner. Unfortunately, they’re always NEW recipes so dinner, although planned, is still a gamble.
When I’m cooking for the family, I improvise. Take last night.
I’d inadvertently bought chorizo.
“How do you inadvertently buy chorizo, Evangeline?”
“You go to Costco and leave your brain at home stuck in a book.”
I decided to make stuffed mushrooms since Mom and I are doing the low-carb thing. But I had lots of chorizo left over.
What goes with chorizo? Beans, obviously.
What else? Maybe canned pumpkin? I added that.
The contents of my skillet looked, well, brown. I added Rotel tomatoes. Brown and red is a good color combo, right?
That’s about the time I realized that nobody was going to eat my . . . stuff. What does Evangeline do when she’s created something weird for dinner? Try to fix it with something even weirder. I made guacamole with Greek yogurt.
And since I needed something close to normal, I also made breakfast sausage, rice, and cornbread.
By the end of the evening I'd cooked three separate meals, my kitchen was a disaster, and I had heaps of chorizo “stuff” left over. I ended up eating my guacamole with apple slices.
I think I need help. Are there any culinary therapists out there? What am I going to do with the second package of chorizo in my freezer? Should I stop adding canned pumpkin to everything? Is it normal for a thirty-something woman to not really be interested in eating anything but avocados?
Please advise. My family has started coming to the table wearing fight-or-flight expressions.
