Culinary limitations vs. imagination: Winning by just knowing where you stand
I just told a friend of mine that I must absolutely go grocery shopping today. Otherwise I will be serving shredded phone book for supper, with some ketchup squirted all over the top for taste.
When it comes to food, I have no imagination. I can’t look in the cabinets like my grandma did, find maybe three ingredients and then happily throw something together and call it a meal that other people would actually eat. Sometimes I wish I could be different. So when I really want to shame myself, I watch the food network.
I can’t get past my comfort zone of repeatedly whipping up the same four meals every week. Hamburgers. Hamburgers with gravy. Pork roast. Fried bologna. Some of that stuck-in-boring-food trouble is not my fault. The farmer would turn his nose up at a casserole or quiche anyway. He is strictly a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, no fluff- thank goodness.
Here’s another part of the problem, though. I hate grocery stores. Even though my husband loves to go to the grocery, I can’t assign this task to him and expect to stay married. The last time I sent him to the store, I asked for a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. He came home with corn curls, Mountain Dew and a load of bread. Not good.
Many of my friends are creative, confident cooks who brag about their culinary accomplishments. But I know my limitations, buddy.
I would never purchase fish of any kind, for example, unless it’s maybe fish sticks. I know I can’t handle the stress of trying to cook it, broil it, bake it, whatever. I don’t want to know how to cut up a chicken. And every Thanksgiving, I order a bird. The restaurant knows me by name. I won’t work with a recipe that has more than three steps. I know nothing about a hard ball stage. And my kitchen tools include a mixer, a wooden spoon and a take-out menu.
I know what I’m good at- I’m pretty good at making dinner out of Big Macs, complete with a paper plate and a bag of barbeque potato chips, especially when there’s no phone book pages left to dip in ketchup.
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