Hello, Midlife Kitchen!

Another day at the office…in the kitchen

I used to be the family member who could burn water. Seriously, macaroni and cheese, baloney sandwiches, Hot Pockets, and instant mashed potatoes were my staples for many years. If I was feeling saucy (pun intended) I would stick some chicken in a bag of Italian dressing and call that “gourmet). While there is nothing wrong with a lack of skills in the kitchen, it certainly was something I admittedly wore as a secret badge of honor in my 20’s. “Look at me! I’m too busy pursuing my career/going to graduate school/going bar-hopping with my friends to care about actual COOKING!”

In graduate school, which I was pursuing to have the chance at making an even greater impact on the mission and issues I cared about, I developed a weekend routine that included a great local coffee shop in my neighborhood. Across the street from this coffee house was a great local bookstore (neither of which are there anymore, I’m sad to say). I would finish my coffee and newspaper, bid my coffee klatch pals adieu, and wander into the bookstore looking for inspiration of any kind. Due to my graduate student lifestyle, the bargain books bin was always my first stop in the store. And inevitably, there were always numerous out-of-print or not popular-enough cookbooks in there. Mind you, this was before the days of the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, Top Chef, or even the internet for that matter. Cookbooks, and cooking for fun, weren’t as common in the social sphere as they are today.

So one weekend I picked up a sale bin copy of “The Best of Food and Wine/1993 Collection”. As with other cookbooks I’d looked through, I thought the pictures were pretty, and the food looked good, but figured it would wind up a coffee table book like other “make me seem more interesting” books I’d bought previously. Then I got a wild hair one day and decided to actually (gasp!) try making one of the recipes. The target: Chicken with Pesto. The outcome: inedible! The pesto turned out grainy and tasting like dirt. In the hindsight of someone who now knows a thing or two about reading a recipe, I realized the hard way that yes, Virginia, there IS a difference between dried and fresh herbs! Whoops. And so it began…my dalliances with cooking.

Skipping ahead to dating my wonderful husband, I told him when we were getting to know each other that I was one of those rare people who actually meant it when I said things like “How is the meal?” or “Does this dress make me look fat?” In my first effort at making dinner for him, I made oven roasted chicken breasts, steamed broccoli (frozen, from a  bag), and a salad. Of course, I don’t actually like broccoli, and it turns out he doesn’t like salad, so I was off to a great start. The chicken was my only hope. Well, it was dry. And when I asked him how it was, he, in his very polite, Southern-raised manner, said “Oh, it’s very good.” I told him to put his fork down immediately, look me in the eye, and answer again. After some urging, he begrudgingly admitted that yes, the chicken was dry. And with that was he was promoted to head recipe taster. He has regretted that at times over the years.

Have I mentioned that I am a people pleaser? Well, that internal driver means a couple of things. One, I want people to like what I’ve done or offered, and I want them to tell me so. Two, if I’m told someone likes something I’ve done, I tend to go overboard the next time (and the next time after that). So I figured out that snacks and hors d’oeuvres were what I did well, and I stuck with those as my staples—and sources of kudos—for quite some time. Things like feta-stuffed mushrooms, sausage rolls, and spinach dip were the go-to items requested when we went to potlucks. But I admit I got bored with these staples! It was time to branch out.

We moved to Germany after we were married, and as I looked for a job, which is no easy feat as an American in Europe, I decided to bust out those bargain-bin cookbooks and other myriad of cooking magazines. I tried my hand at risotto, and realized that variety being the spice of life, that risotto 4 nights in a row was probably pushing my normally even-tempered recipe taster over the edge. Time to figure out more variation, and even do some of them well if at all possible.

Trial and error, and some leaps of faith have made me realize that it doesn’t have to be fancy-schmancy to be good, and if you want to experiment with dishes that may be perceived as only-to-be-made-by-trained-chefs, what’s the worst that can happen (well, a lot, but that’s for another post)?  In the decade or so that has followed, I’ve become not just a pretty good cook, but a darned good one (if I do say so myself–and I do!).  And that confidence has lead me here…

So in this brand-spanking new endeavor here, I will explore the next chapter in my ever-expanding cookbook, or my “Midlife Kitchen”. 

All I can say now is “Yikes!  It’s hot, and scary, in this end of the new frying pan!”

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