the chef did it.

My sister-in-law suggested that I blog about cooking, but I am hesitant about the idea. The trouble is taking what is essentially just a recipe and turning it into a good blog entry. If you're not interested in cooking, there should be something for you to enjoy as well. I suppose I should see it as a challenge.

Perhaps I feel this way because it's only recently that reading a recipe on a blog or anywhere would interest me. Recipes are all about the same, right? There's some ingredients, some directions, some notes, but never any plot twists, intrigue, or thoughtful commentary on the human condition.

But lately, I've been reading a lot of recipes, because I've discovered what makes a recipe worth studying - trying to figure out if you can actually make the thing. Out of nowhere, I discovered that I like to cook. Actually, I discovered that I was not totally inept at cooking, which was really what was keeping me from enjoying it. Who likes to do things they suck at? Not me. I approached the kitchen with apprehension, and more than one dish was flavored with the salt of my frustrated tears. But somehow, quite magically, I found some easy recipes that yielded delicious results and my confidence started growing. I am not afraid anymore.

I'm excited about my new hobby. I bought a new slow cooker, loaf pans, pie plates, and even dropped some major cash on a food processor (which has already paid $2 for itself in grated cheese savings). I bring my lunch to work every day and secretly hope someone will ask me what I'm having so that I can proudly tell them that I made every bit of it. I want to cook two or three new dishes every evening, despite the fact that my fridge is already full of what I cooked on past evenings. I look at recipes online, marking things that sound good and within my skill level. In restaurants, if I find something I like, I go home and look it up, to see if it can be prepared at home. I feel like I'm unravelling the mystery of food - I'm discovering that many fantastic dishes just aren't that hard to make.

I found a can of soup in my pantry the other day, a pop-top lid number with 'Select' or 'Fancy' or 'Choice' in the name that I'd bought months ago on sale. I scowled at it. What was I going to do with this? Since then, I've learned to make about four kinds of soup myself that can show this silly can what it can do with its pop-top. I suppose I'll have to donate it to a food drive to go to someone who doesn't have a slow cooker.

So what I'm saying in all this is that I'm going to at least give my sister-in-law's (sister's-in-law?) suggestion a whirl. I may decide that it's not in me to make recipes interesting to those who are still in their pop-top lid stage. Or maybe I'll write a brilliant murder mystery, where the important clue is a teaspoon of allspice.