You Too can Learn to Cook! All You Have to do is Really Believe!
||||||Here it is: About three years ago, I didn’t know how to fry a pork-chop without totally fucking it. And if I cracked an egg, it was into a hangover tonic. I lived on the “dollar menu”, Top Raman and Hooter’s wings. I had the typical bachelor fridge contents: Beer, baking soda, a few condiments and the ubiquitous container of Chinese food that was so rancid that it was just best not to be disturbed. Lets check the freezer… Ah! A half gallon bottle of Jameson Whiskey and some ice cubes. The cupboards contained my menagerie of exotic and frightening potted meats and aerosol cheese spreads.
||||||I started to feel foolish for not knowing how to cook anything. Being a good cook is manly; and here I am, I didn’t even know how to grill a steak, or even get a grill started. What kind of sorry milquetoast excuse for a man does that make me? So I bought a few cookbooks at some thrift stores and picked up a crock pot and started learning.
||||||There were a few terrible mistakes and a few good ones too. Every time I made a dish I make it better than I did the last time. I learned that it isn’t chemistry, and you don’t have to (and usually shouldn’t) follow the recipe to the letter. I also learned that baking bread IS chemistry and if you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing there, you’re really going to fuck some shit up. Eventually you get a sense for what you can get away with, and you’ll be able to do everything by eye.
||||||If I’ve never made a certain dish before, I take two or three different recipes for the same thing. I look them over and sort of graft them together. That way you aren’t missing anything. You’ll have a good idea of what you tolerances are for ingredients and cooking time/temperature. I’ll cook it and I’ll write down the what I did with the bastard recipe and (depending on how it comes out) what I should do the next time I make it. After I’ve made the dish a few times and I’m satisfied with it, I’ll write down the recipe in the back of my favorite cook book.
||||||I cook all of my own food now, and every day. And I’m very proud of the food I make. It takes a little effort, and some of my evenings totally revolve around preparing food, but it’s worth it, and as your skills go up so will the amount of fun you have!
God, I’m such a fag.
SARACANITE 