Domestic Goddess?

How do we reconcile who we are with who we want to be? By accepting who we've been? No, that seems too easy, too not enough. We reconcile who we are with who we want to be by not letting who we have been define us. We can allow the passing of time to happen to us or to happen for us. Time can just be that - time passing. Or time can be our champion, our challenger. The ticking of the clock daring us to be, to do, to become, to try something new. I believe in the evolution of our lives- that we live and experience and be so that who we are will always become who we've been and not who we will always be.

"There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves." Thomas Wolfe

I read that quote and I laughed.

Say the word kitchen, and utensils, pots and pans, mixers, oven, stove, and I am already lost - dazed and confused. Cooking is not my forte. BUT I have discovered one thing about cooking that appeals to me. When I cook it feels like breaking a law of humanity, like doing something I was never meant to do - becoming someone new. It feels liberal, liberating, exciting, challenging - and while I wouldn't call it fun, the challenge has become my temptation and inspiration. I have decided to challenge myself by combining the things that I love most with the things I kind of despise. So . . . my challenge (as Julie and Julia as it sounds) is to once a week cook a meal that I am completely and entirely unsure I am capable of creating. To Appeal to my creative soul I will try to make it pretty, I will take pictures, and I will write about it. And most importantly I will learn to laugh at myself along the way, and try not to poison my housemates.

So here's something new, the evolution of my cooking revolution. . .

Week 1:

minestrone

so here I am with all my fresh ingredients ready to try a run at domestic godessness . . . my new glade candle is lit smelling deliciously like home in the fall. I am armed with a small onion that does not seem small enough, two questionably medium sized carrots, far more cabbage than a girl should eat, and a rib of celery which reminds me much more of an Adam than a cooking ingredient. . . and so it begins. . .

Carrots were chopped, though massacred might be a better description, and I may have remembered the need to peel the outside of the carrot after I had already chopped the first one, but its all in the learning experience. Sadly a few of the carrot pieces had a mind of their own and flew across the kitchen from the toaster oven to beneath the fridge - on their own accord I swear! Cabbage - chopped. Celery rib - thinly sliced (after a google image search on how to do this). Onions - chopped, tears were shed, yes. Garlic was minced- again thanks to google images and the discovery that a clove of garlic did not in fact mean the entire 'bulb' of garlic. Google this dinner would have been a disaster without you, and of course a phone call with my mother who assured me garlic butter is in fact possible without a garlic press. Spinich was enjoyably torn to pieces. And a recipes version of 10 minutes of prep time is discovered to be Joanna's version of an hour. On to the cooking. . .

In the whirlwind that is me, ingredients were added, sautéed, boiled, and simmered to their appropriateness. There was a slight incident with an attempt at garlic butter where the butter boiled quite thoroughly in the microwave - but I decided it shouldn't be poisonous and moved on. . .

My first meal was completed! and kinda delicious too. Minsetrone soup, with all fresh veggies, and a side of garlic bread which consequently made my fingers permanently smell like garlic. And now I am able to laugh about the fact that in two hours time I managed to make '30 minute minestrone'.