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(Originally published at The Smart Kitchen: http://thesmartkitchen.blogspot.com)
Last night, after I had eaten dinner and watched a (more interesting that it has been) episode of Project Runway, my roommate (the one known as Esmerelda in Blog World) arrived home and was greeted with a happy "Hello!" from me, along with, "I'm making a meal I'm not planning on eating."* Her response: "Why does that not surprise me?"
*...at that moment. I don't waste food. I just sometimes store it up for the winter (or the coming week) like a chipmunk or a squirrel...except I use Gladware in lieu of holes in the ground or notches in trees.
As I had been watching Project Runway, I was just overcome with this urge to cook. Something. Anything. It was like I was an addict in need of my next hit but I wasn't going to be able to satiate myself by chewing gum or sucking on a lollipop. (Do those things even work? I've never been an addict, except to Diet Coke, so I don't know.)
People always think it's crazy that I can bake all the time and not eat the cookies, brownies, candy, etc. that I concoct and create. I get met with, "Goodness, I don't know how you don't gain weight from all that baking," and my roommate from college told me she lost 10 pounds after we stopped living together. It's simple really, and you can hate me for it, but as much as I love food and trying new tastes, flavors, ingredients, dishes...I don't love eating so much as all that goes into (and surrounds) the process of making (or discovering/ordering/buying) what I eat.
I bake (and cook!) for the love of the process, the result, and the creativity, as well as the symbolic gesture of love/compassion/comaraderie/affection that giving the gift of food entails....granted, I haven't been baking all that much recently, but, when I am teaching, I can bake for my co-workers or my kids, when there is a holiday, I can cook bake for my family and friends, when there is a potluck or dinner party, I demonstrate my joy for the celebration through food, and when I was in college, I had a whole sorority house to provide for! (Now, I have my hard-working, studious roommates.)
I do, however, also cook for me. Not for me to eat, but for me in the sense that I love the physical act and mental challenge of creation through food pairing and the excitement of taking an idea (or recipe) through planning and preparation into fruition...as well as the discovery of whether or not it was a good idea to begin with...
Some people knit. Some people collect stamps. I cook!
"Sarah, you are boring me. Stop with all this emotional frou-frou. What happened to your wit? Where is the snarkiness? Where are the pointless asides? Come on, woman, get it together!"
Right.
What to do when the need to cook strikes? Well, luckily for me, my hobby (addiction) doesn't hurt anyone (unless my knife slips...which actually might be likely...please add "Knife Skills" class to my birthday list...and spell it with a z: "Knife Skillz"...I don't know why that amuses me.) and will not cause lifelong physical health ramifications (well, unless I turn this Smart Kitchen into the Lard Kitchen and completely fall off the bandwagon by churning out fudge made with butter and cheddar cheese--which, come to think of it, Paula Deen has actually made-- but as of right now, I don't think my affection for instant pudding is going to hurt me that much), so I did the obvious thing:
I cooked.
Taking stock of the fridge, my eyes fell to the sour cream carton I had purchased for the Crepe-ril Fools celebration. The last time I had leftover sour cream (from making the "Sarah" version of Eating Well's Braised Paprika Chicken), I had also just returned from my home in Pennsylvania with a stock of dried and canned mushrooms, "borrowed" from my mother. Sour cream and mushrooms mean only one thing to me: STROGANOFF! (A
