Skip to main content

Culinary Reputation

One of the funniest things I have ever heard come out of a kid's mouth is that lunch was her favorite part of the day. That wasn't the only kid to say something to that effect, either. I've heard other kids say some variation of, "this food is awesome" enough times to realize that my mom is a legitimately good cook. It's actually gotten to the point where my mom has a reputation among the parents; they're always excited when she cooks for a function, since they know it will be quality food.

As it turns out, this seems to run in the family. It's just not the same type of reputation.

I've always treated cooking as a bit of a chore. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a good meal, but my criteria for what to prepare have always involved speed of preparation and simplicity. As I like to say, I can cook well enough to stave off starvation. I know this isn't going to impress anyone any time soon, but it's yet to cause me any grief. And it's not like I don't have a couple of simple, go-to dishes that I can throw together if I want something fancier than plain old sustenance.

Funnily enough, that last part was not lost on my family, and my brother, in particular. He called to chat one night, and I mentioned that I was cooking dinner. Without missing a beat, he asked, "lemme guess, you threw chicken in the oven? Or fried up some eggs? I remember in college you'd always cook that." Well, as a matter of fact, no (I threw together some ground turkey and peas). But still, the fact that he immediately jumped to those options cracked me up. Like I said, I seem to have acquired a bit of a reputation.

He has a valid point, though. I think I'm going to have to branch out just a little bit to expand my culinary repertoire. I wouldn't want to be predictable, now would I?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

Dreams

Normally, I don't eat very many sweets. I tend to eat pretty generous portions, but I generally prefer savory food over sweet. In fact, I usually prefer things half as sweet when possible. My preference doesn't have anything to do with health reasons, it's just one of those things that I've always liked better. That said, I do inevitably eat dessert, particularly if I'm out with other people. My stance towards dessert is roughly equivalent to those who are social drinkers . If other people want to munch on something for dessert, I'm not about to cross my arms and refuse. That'd be just a tad gauche. So, I do eat some dessert. I even have a few standby favorites that I'll usually order when presented with them (brownies, creme brulee, and apple pie). But left to my own devices, I'm not about to go hunting for dessert. Apparently, this means that the sugar can really mess with my system under the right circumstances. As I've discovered, ...

New York City Trip (Day 1)

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...