Sometimes I Make Dinner

Let's talk cooking.

I'm still in a stranger-in-a-strange-land kind of feeling towards the whole art of making dinner from scratch. Traveling frequently for work for a few years got me in pretty close relationship with my freezer and microwave. Those two appliances and me had a pretty good thing going on. One would keep my collection of frozen dinners nice and cold while the other would warm them up. In return, I would allow them to remain plugged in and pay the electric bill each month. It was nice. Simple. Symbiotic.

But I have been trying lately to make real dinners for myself on the occasions that Anthony is not home. It's not started out easy. When I look in the fridge and try to figure out what the heck kind of flavors go with what the heck other kind of flavors, more often than not I start feeling like I've shown up for a class on test day and haven't studied. Panic starts to set in and then I wig out and eat cereal for the second meal in one day.

Bit by bit I'm getting braver, but the going is slow. Thank goodness for cereal and pasta because that means I won't starve along the way.

The other night I pulled it together and accomplished the following: (baby steps remember)

Step 1: Start with a drink to bolster confidence in one's cooking prowess. You can do this. More bourbon first? Okay.

Step 2: Cut brussel sprouts in half while managing to keep one's fingers still intact despite the bourbon intake that has occurred. Slow and steady. Twenty minutes later (or however long it takes you to carefully cut brussel sprouts despite your fear of really sharp blades severing off your fin- oh, you aren't afraid of knives and got this task done while I was whining? GOOD FOR YOU.) Assemble in straight rows on a pan (because organization of cruciferous vegetables is certain to enhance their flavor), douse with olive oil, stress that the olive oil distribution is not even, get over yourself (myself), add salt and pepper, and broil the crap out of them for fifteen minutes or so. Grate some parmesan cheese on top and DEVOUR. 

But not before....

Step 3: Pick up the frighteningly sharp knife again and decimate the following items: one red bell pepper, one green bell pepper and a turkey sausage. While cutting up the turkey sausage try not to think about the following things: how it was made, where it was made and what things it may or may not resemble. 

Distract that slightly disturbing chain of thought by heating up oil in a skillet. Do not think about house fires or grease fires while doing so. Try to remember what puts out a grease fire. Baking soda? Baking powder? Oh, it's 9 PM already? Time to get cracking. Cook the turkey sausage, cook up some bulgar wheat in the beloved microwave and then! Then! The fun begins.

Throw everything in a big bowl, crumble some feta, add some balsamic and lemon juice and then spend another twenty minutes carefully arranging everything in cute dishes, lighting them just right and photographing them for the blog post you will someday write if laziness doesn't set in first. By the time everything has reached approximate room temperature and the photo shoot is done, sit down to eat and reflect that cooking isn't really that hard after all.