Cooking with the Tyrant
I don't really like to cook, so I don't cook often. But the best thing I've discovered about cooking is that when I cook, I don't have to cook again for a long time.

My mom loves to cook. She always cooked a lot when I was a kid, and she still cooks a lot now. She says it's therapeutic for her. Unfortunately, I did not inherit her desire, nor her skills for cooking. But surprisingly, when I do take the time and effort to cook, it actually turns out pretty good. For the most part.

I think my mom was disappointed that I didn't take after her in the cooking department. In highschool and college, she would always try to get me into the kitchen with her to learn how to cook her recipes. I think she wanted to pass them down to me. She even started a cookbook for me, and one for my sister, of all her recipes. But when my mom noticed that the book seemed to collect a lot of dust in my cabinet from non-use, she quit trying to add recipes to it.

My sister liked to cook and she would get into the cooking extravaganzas with my mom. She would sometimes even experiment on her own, and too many times I was the only one around to be the guinea pig for her 'creations'. I had to give her points for trying. But I think it was soon after the 'fluffy cheesy puffs' for her french class that I had to resign from my taste-tester position. The puffs were neither fluffy, nor cheesy, nor puffy. And I think I lost the will to eat for awhile.

My kitchen duties were eventually reduced to chopping things, and then cleaning up afterwards. These things I could do well. But times in the kitchen were something I absolutely abhorred. I was completely bored with the whole process of creating something that will soon be devoured and no longer in existence. Why spend so much time preparing something that doesn't last? Plus, there's a lot of waiting in cooking. You have to mix and let things set, sometimes cooking one thing before you can start cooking something else. If you have several things going at one time, it's like a circus. You don't know where your attention should be at any one moment, and when you focus on one thing, you are missing what's going on with something else. And that's when things burn and ruin, and you end up ordering pizza anyway.

I usually say, start with the pizza and save everyone a lot of time and stinky kitchen smells.

But then again, pizza gets expensive after awhile. So generally, I cook at home. And let me tell you that I consider macaroni and cheese, and frozen corn dogs heated in the oven as 'cooking'.

Then, every once in awhile, I get hungry for some 'real' food. I miss my mom's cooking, and since she lives several states away, it's not convenient for me to stop by for dinner and bring home the leftovers. So, at times I'll pull out the dusty cookbook she made for me and I'll choose one of the recipes for a real meal. The book is full of easy recipes that she's tried to show me over the years. Any time she would say, "Honey, you could make this," I knew it would end up in the cookbook and I would be expected to try it on my own before long.

So, throughout the past several years, I've developed a repertoire of about four regular items that I can cook well, which I rotate on a random basis. Sometimes I throw in another item to mix things up a bit, but mostly I stick with the ones I know and trust. Living alone and not often brave enough to cook for anyone else, as I care for people and do not wish to harm them, I have to be really excited about eating the same thing for at least a week, or I have to make something that freezes well. I'm a huge fan of leftovers.

I never cook anything for anyone unless I've made it for myself and survived. Then, I will feed it to other people, with caution. Unfortunately I rarely have people over for dinner because I fear they will soon discover that I only know how to make four things, and they'll get sick of those four things, finding me dull and strange in the process. It's very complicated.

Freezing food, by the way, is my other favorite thing about cooking. It's the greatest cooking invention ever. Anything that I can make which allows me to freeze part of it for re-discovery weeks later when I'm starving for 'real' food but not wanting to cook, I love it. I currently have an entire quiche awaiting re-discovery in my freezer right now. I can hardly wait to be ready for a week full of quiche.

This weekend, I had two cooking adventures. One involved the new waffle iron I received for Christmas. This was to be a new addition to my repertoire of cooking. Apparently my parents decided I need to make more waffles, so they bought me a waffle iron. This was also the case with the Fry Daddy my mom bought me at Thanksgiving. Apparently I need to fry more stuff. I haven't used it, yet, but I'm on the lookout for stuff I can fry.

The other cooking adventure was taco soup, from my Mamaw's recipe. This is a favorite of mine because it involves putting a lot of stuff together in a pot, and then letting it sit and heat for a long time. Things that cook while sitting and heating, without requiring me to keep a vigil over it, are things of which I am a big fan. This time, however, I would add a new twist to the process by using my new crock pot, also purchased for me recently by my mother.

My mom seems to think that now that I live in a house, people constantly stream by looking for food. Maybe she thinks my house is actually a front for a hidden restaurant. She has therefore equipped my kitchen as though I will either be cooking for lots of people often, or that I will be hiring a personal chef to use all the new kitchen equipment. Neither is true. But the shiny new kitchen stuff does look very pretty in my kitchen.

The waffles went off nearly flawlessly. Thankfully. Waffle mess can be a disaster. I made them for dinner Friday night. Breakfast for dinner is the coolest thing ever. My parents and I had made waffles for Christmas last week, using their new waffle iron. So I'd already had some practice. This time, however, I was on my own.

And, it was a success. Although I did discover that while the instructions said to use something plastic and heat-resistant to remove the waffle from the non-stick surface, my rubber spatula is apparently not heat resistant. It's now a funny shape. But I even (successfully) cut the recipe on the box in half, so that I wouldn't have thousands of waffles running amok in my kitchen. This was tough, as it involved math and measuring things differently than what the box told me to do. And even with half the recipe, I had more waffles than I could handle. But you know the cool thing about waffles?

They freeze well. I now have frozen waffles in the freezer, awaiting re-discovery. It's like homemade Eggos.

The taco soup in the crock pot went off flawlessly, as well. I'd made this soup before, but never in the crock pot. I have to say, the crock pot is a fabulous invention. I threw all the ingredients in there early in the day, and later when I was ready to eat, there it was. Already warm and melded together. Quite tasty.

And the best part? It freezes well. I put some of it into serving size containers, and one day when I'm hungering for taco soup, I will have a soup-cicle waiting for me in the freezer.

And even better than that, I don't have to cook for much of the rest of the week.

I cook not to cook.

I just hope I never run out of room in the freezer. That would be a disaster.

C.T.