Good Eats

I am not a food gay. Let me repeat that, I am NOT a food gay.

That’s not to say that I don’t like to eat. You can look at me and tell that isn’t quite the case; it’s just that food confuses and frustrates me.

I grew up with a working, single mom who still managed to get dinner on the table every night. However, that dinner might have came in a box or it might have been Shake and Bake, but I never helped. I just never picked up how to turn ingredients into food.

Cooking is a skill and an art that I have yet to and will never master. Part of that is an innate desire to want to please people, so having a “test kitchen” run at making people dinner is not an option. I will not serve people bad food. The stress of just thinking about cooking for a group of friends (who I know love me and would only judge me a little) completely blocks me from being able to get started cooking.

It’s also SO daunting. I hang around with people who talk about cooking and food as though it’s as natural as signing your name or knowing the alphabet. They all know the difference between various kinds of cuts and how best to prepare this or that and what spices provide what flavor. I can tell you that the V8 soup in the box isn’t as good as the Campbell’s soup in the box and which Lean Cuisine is the tastiest. I always feel so out of place when we talk about food (which is often), because I just have no frame of reference. I have nothing intelligent to say and no stories of “well the last time I roasted a ....”

I”ll also say that I’m not ashamed to admit that I like Stouffer’s Lasagna and I’m not opposed to having pasta sauce out of a jar, and my “I”ve had a bad day dinner is a frozen pizza and a bottle of cheap shiraz”. (Shout out to The Little Penguin wine). I assume this is heresy to some.

This leads me to where I found myself earlier today. I was in Kroger with a shopping list sent to me by e-mail by the boyfriend. I’m walking around a foreign Kroger (on Chinoe) and staring at my BlackBerry experiencing actual make-me-shake-a-little stress. The list said things like “asparagus OR broccoli”. How do I decide which? How much? How do I tell which looks better? What is a good price for either? Then, “1 Onion”. Did y’all know there are like 4 kinds of onion? Red, yellow, white, vidalia and then those all over again, but organic. I was then told to buy steak. I’ve never bought steak in my life. This was it’s own stress and involved a conversation with a guy behind a counter. This made the situation worse, because I had to announce my ignorance to another.

Nevertheless, dinner was purchased and it was tasty. It was also NOT prepared by me. I did my usual make sure everyone’s glass of wine was full and manned the DVR as we watched trash TV. This is what I’m good at. I can keep people happy and entertain, I just can’t possibly feed them without assistance, not even Shake and Bake.