Cooking

I remember learning to cook back in my impoverished college student days. It did not take long to notice that cooking food rather than buying it ready to eat made the monthly stipend last longer. If I was careful, I often had some extra cash to support at least a small pot and beer budget.

I learned the basics from my mom and from a cookbook she gave me when Bean, BeBop and I shared a first apartment in the Towson, Maryland area in 1971.

Being a cookbook of meals comprised of basic and inexpensive food stuffs, the recipes were simple enough to understand by an illiterate wannabe chef like myself. I became a decent cook who usually could be depended on to serve something palatable on the nights it was my turn to cook.

I still have that book as the photo I just took moments ago will attest. And not only do I still use it, my wife, who has been feeding our family for decades, also uses it sometimes. The book is often misplaced on the shelf of over 60 cookbooks amassed over the years by my parents and my wife. It is the only cookbook I use now.

Okay, so I have established that I learned enough food prep back the day to provide myself and my wife sustaining nourishment without all the drama of a newly wed cooking their first few meals. I still screw up on occasion, but for the most part all my recent meals have been within the parameters of edible.

I haven't taken over cooking for the two of us. That will never happen. One reason is my wife actually likes to cook, though I think she would not be inclined to admit it. And second of all, I am an eater first and a cook only when I have to be one.

It seems I am at a crossroads of sorts. I can continue to create the same meals I have mastered or kick this chef gig into a higher gear like I did the other night. I tried out a new recipe I found on the Internet after googling "Pork Chops". The recipe promised, after an easy peasy, no muss no fuss, 45 minute flurry of labor, I would be serving the juiciest, most flavorful pork chops ever.

Hmm.

The pork chops turned out fine, although not the juiciest I have ever had. They were indeed flavorful though. What did not happen was the no muss, no fuss easy peasy, 45 minute flurry of activity part. It was a two hour torturous floundering through cooking Hell that left the kitchen in shambles and me wondering why I decided to believe I could cook.

In the end though, the meal was as good as anything I have come up with recently and my wife actually designated some of the leftovers as her lunch the next day.

Mission accomplished.

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What particular music would fit in here?

According to family lore, the first music I listened to and responded to as a toddler was the country music that was broadcast from Denver down the east face  of the Rockies to our home in Colorado Springs in the early 1950's. Supposedly, when "Hey Good Lookin", by Hank Williams came on, I would start dancing. 

Anyway, enjoy Hank at his toe tapping best.