Let me Cook!

 

Terry here, with our autumn topic. November is a busy month, at least in the USA. Some people send out for, pay someone to, decide to stop bothering with...Thanksgiving dinner! While others lovingly prepare, take pride in, look forward to doing it. What bits of adult life would you ditch / have you ditched? What “chores” feel like treats? 

 I love this question. Let’s start with “treats.” I know several people who hate to cook, and for them it’s a chore. Me? By now, everyone probably knows that I love to cook. Even when I was single and lived alone, or when my husband was away, I’d always cook something nice for myself. I love the way things smell when I’m cooking, love to make sure there’s a variety of tastes and colors on the plate. Love to experiment with different recipes. For me, cooking is a way to unwind after a day of writing and writing-related nightmares. Would you rather work on book promotion or cook a nice meal? Yeah. And here is a shot from Thanksgiving during Covid...

I recently invited a friend for dinner and he told me he had serious dietary issues. There were many, many things he could not eat for health reasons. My response? I rubbed my hands gleefully and cried, “Lemme at it!” There are so many choices to make when I cook, that sometimes it feels overwhelming. Here's what I cooked. Looks good, right?

What am I going to cook tonight? Indian? Greek (since I just got back from Greece, this has been a new addition). Tex-Mex? Vegetarian? Italian? Just plain California (think salads and avocados)? So when someone narrows that array of choices, it’s something of a relief. Unless someone is just plain picky, and I have little patience for that. I had too much of that when my son was young and refused to eat anything that wasn’t white—potatoes, rice, or pasta (with nothing on it!). Thank goodness, he changed, so that isn’t an issue. 

 I love to entertain, and sadly, since we moved to SoCal, I don’t entertain much. Even when we lived in Italy, we had lots of people to help us celebrate holiday meals. Here, not so much. I don’t think there’s much sense cooking a turkey for a handful of people, so we may end up having a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Or maybe something exotic like pheasant or goose. Or chile rellenos. 

I wouldn’t call them treats, but I don’t even mind most housecleaning chores, even cleaning the cat box, which I scoop out every single day. But there are two I won’t do. When my husband and I were discussing getting married I told him there are two things I don’t do: vacuum and take out the trash. Well, eventually, I’ll do both. I’ll vacuum when the cat hair starts clinging to my pants legs. I’ll take out the trash when it either smells bad or is overflowing. So, he said he’d do both—and he does. 

He also does the dishes. He even gets huffy if I try to chip in, unless we’ve had a dinner party and it’s late—then, he reluctantly allows me into “his” domain. 

 I loathe doing laundry, but I do it anyway for a stupid reason: I don’t trust anybody else to do it right! Think pink socks, shrunken expensive T-shirts, wrinkled pants left in the dryer too long. I used to not mind it as much when we had side-by-side washer/dryers, but the washer is on bottom and therefore hard to reach, and the dryer is on top…and also hard to reach. Yes, I know I'm complaining, but that's the point of chores you can't stand!

 I love a beautiful garden and admire friends who are gardeners. Even when I had a big garden,

I simply didn’t have the urge to do the gardening myself. Oh, once I’d get into it, I enjoyed it, but I procrastinated something fierce. 

 And last I’ll mention bill paying. I didn’t mind it. When we first got married, I handled the bills. And then, I discovered that my husband painstakingly went over every bill I paid to make sure I had done it “right.” Bingo. Gone. I thought it was ridiculous for both of us to spend time on it, and I haven’t done it since. 

 As for bits of adult life I would “ditch,” could we please go back to the time when plump women were all the rage? I would gladly ditch dieting!