From Burning Everything to Cooking in My Apartment: A Capable Cook

Tentative Trial Cooking

            When I was growing up, my family, having made other choices, didn’t have enough money to eat out very often. We ate out, on average, less than once per month. Therefore, cooking was a regular part of life. Starting from a very young age, I helped my mom and dad make pancakes for Sunday brunch by mixing the powdery mix with milk from the local dairy. Around the age of 12, I learned from my mom how to make scrambled eggs and dippy (or over easy) eggs, as my mom breathed a sigh of relief as now of my two younger siblings only one of them was a toddler. Before that she didn’t have the time to actually teach me to cook. She still didn’t have much time, but she started giving me instructions as she went out the door to take my (at the time only) two younger siblings to gymnastics. Sometimes it went ok and the pizza cooked great in the oven as well as the fries and the peas. Other times, I stood there and watched the green beans turn black, as I wasn’t sure when exactly to take them off the stove. Occasionally, I was actually happy with what I made. I distinctly remember rolling raw chicken around in a gluten-free flour mixture and being both utterly disgusted with the raw chicken and undeniably proud that I hadn’t visibly screwed up yet and had some tiny measure of confidence. That meal also turned out ok.

Working in Food Service

            As with many teens and pre-graduation-collegiates, I work and worked part-time jobs in the food service industry since high school. I mentioned before, that I worked at an ice cream shop, which also sold food, so I can make a pretty decent sundae. Plus, when I was really bored as often was the case though it helped me come up with some ideas (see Hotel California and the Lord of the Flies), sometimes I helped the cook in the back measure out burgers, and mix up coleslaw. That was my favorite. Pulling out the big sea-green plastic tub, I’d throw in cabbage that I’d cut earlier, with one of the dullest knives on the planet. Then grab the pre-cut bag of purple cabbages, carrots, and I think lettuce, but I can’t remember, and dump that in. While I was doing that, the cook, whoever was there, would whip up the creamy speckled dressing that I would then pour on top. Finally, it was the fun part. Wriggling my hands into a pair of plastic gloves, I reached into the cool dressing and crinkly greens and mixed it all up. I don’t like coleslaw. But I love mixing coleslaw with my hands and creating things that people like to eat.

            Naturally, then in college I didn’t mind signing up to work in the dining commons. This is where my cooking experience really took off. Moving up from the starting position of black hat, so named because they wear black hats, I became a culinary apprentice. Helping the cooks make 200 servings of pancakes, tens of gallons of different soups, and bag after five-pound bag of grilled chicken, I have expanded my capabilities.

Apartment

Cooking in my apartment has been the most useful and the most experimental way I cook. Sometimes I text my mom and ask her for her ham and potato bake recipe or other favorite recipes from her. When I made key lime pie at the polite request of my boyfriend, I had lime juice left over and I later used that in a different recipe that was built around that ingredient. This lead to my boyfriend recommending that when we grow tired of the meals we typically eat, we should go to the grocery store pick out one ingredient and search for recipes with that ingredient. The next meal I plan on making comes from that idea. While my boyfriend also cooks regularly, I tend to like to try to make new meals more and then he helps me. Coming back from spring break, my boyfriend had a box of jasmine rice from his parents’ house and while we did enjoy making three cups of that a couple of days ago, eating white rice with just veggies or in my boyfriend’s case sirracha or cheese for me is rather boring. So, with the remaining 1 ½  cups of rice*, I am planning on making  creamy chicken and rice tomorrow. Check on twitter (@juliawillwrite) to see how it turned out.

While I don’t plan on becoming a chef, evolving from someone who burned nearly everything they cooked, to someone who helps professional chefs and plans meals for the week at the apartment, is a major confidence boost. At the beginning of this school year, I was nervous about a lot of things. One of them was how I was going to deal with living off campus and cooking my own food and buying my own groceries. However, it turns out I am a pretty capable cook.

Notes: 

*My boyfriend is picking on me and saying why don’t you just say 3/2 instead. He’s a silly goob.

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Image Credit: "cooking with gas" by Mark Bonica