My history (with a few detours)

The beginning…

My dislike of the kitchen began early in my life, so here’s my history (with a few detours). When I moved into my first apartment, I had a crazy roommate. While I am not in a position to professionally opine on the mental status of my roommate, it appeared to be that way to me. If I had a non-cooking blog, it would be a story for the ages.

She was so difficult to live with that I ate sandwiches for every meal. That made getting in and out of the kitchen easy without engaging with her much. I frequently ate in my room. When she was out of town, I remember making spaghetti. Weirdly, I put cinnamon and nutmeg in my spaghetti sauce. I do not know where I learned that, as my parents certainly don’t prepare it that way, and they turned up their noses at it the one time I served it to them.

When I moved to Texas, I had a roommate who had never cooked, so we agreed that I would cook and she would clean the kitchen. That was awesome – at least half of what I disliked about cooking was taken care of. We were poor, so our meals were simple and used basic ingredients—no convenience foods. We had to eat at home, so I pushed through. I had one cookbook, so unless I was making spaghetti or a broth soup, I used that cookbook.

The Middle….

Interlude of several years of returning to Oregon to finish my bachelor’s degree and working for the university I graduated from, which concluded with my writing my resignation at 2 a.m. after 18 months of 12-14 hour days. I found employment with the Japanese eikaiwa GEOS. In June of 1993, I moved to Japan and my tiny Japanese apartment, where I ate a lot of Japanese convenience foods and frequently went out to eat with students and my fellow teachers. 

I met the man I would later marry in Japan. He was from Peru and a fabulous cook. I made a few things from my cookbook – the same one I used in Texas – so he could try some American foods. However, I was happy to let him cook. The food was terrific, and he prepared it so effortlessly. The one thing I made that he loved was biscuits. He requested them all the time.

A disaster and a success…

When my father and I went to Peru for my wedding, my husband asked me to make biscuits for everyone. We had one challenge – our English/Spanish dictionary was only an elementary level and this was before the internet became widely available, so I relied on this obscure word translation for baking powder (leavening) from that dictionary. The dictionary said it was levadura. It isn’t. I’ll report that biscuits made from yeast instead of baking powder are awful. My then-husband’s family thought he was crazy for loving biscuits. I later learned that translation for baking powder is simply a translation of each word and applying the correct Spanish word order, resulting in polvo de hornear (powder to bake with). Once we had the correct product, everyone agreed the bread was as great as my husband had asserted.

When we returned to the United States, my husband was the cook. I occasionally cooked something, but it was infrequent for me to enter the kitchen. We separated after seven years and divorced just after ten years. I’m on my own again in the kitchen, and now I am condemned to eat alone. 

The detours…

My not-so-bright idea, which I had thought was brilliant, was that I needed the right cookbook. I had started this journey before my marriage ended. It continued after, and by the time it was completed, I had a six-foot bookcase overflowing with cookbooks I never used. Seven years ago, I decluttered the collection and have roughly a shelf-and-a-half of cookbooks.

The cookbook collecting resulted in no behavior change nor any desire to change. Fail.

On a parallel track, I thought I needed kitchen tools. I had stoneware for pizza, cakes (square, oblong, bundt), cherry pitter, mango splitter, a plastic tool to cut out the core of iceberg lettuce so the lettuce wouldn’t brown (supposedly), and it goes on and on. I had a waffle maker, panini maker, rice maker, and two crock pots (different sizes); again, it goes on and on.

The kitchen tool/appliance collecting resulted in no behavior change or desire to change. Fail.

I decluttered all of this detritus (with invaluable assistance from the fabulous Serenispace). While I still had no desire to cook, when I needed to do so, I could because it wasn’t the filled-with-dread feeling I’d had upon entering my filled-to-bursting kitchen.

Recent past and today…

Acquiring my Instant Pot™ (IP) is what got me back into the kitchen a bit. I willingly made chili, and I discovered that hard-boiled eggs were a no-fail when prepared in the IP. So I had eggs and chili a lot after the acquisition of the IP.  My baby steps were underway and here I am at 64 buckling down to get into the kitchen routinely and willingly. Get in touch with me here – I’d love to hear from you.