Mastering the Art of....Cooking

Lately I haven't been doing a whole lot of cooking. Okay, so to be fair, I haven't been doing any cooking. But seriously, can you blame me? I'm never quite sure what my stomach is going to do next and most days I can barely stand the smell of food or our kitchen for that matter. So Rob and I have been doing a lot of scavenging as of late. We pretty much decide what we are going to eat about five minutes before we eat it. So there's no plan. There's no preparation. There's actually nothing really to even eat in the apartment right now. It's just the way of it until my stomach settles, i.e. morning sickness decides to take a permanent hiatus.

Honestly, when I was cooking as much as I was and doing as much as I was doing with food. I got tired of it. Very quickly. I got burnt out and I would have basically strike weeks where I wouldn't really cook. You know the feeling. You may not have experienced it with cooking, but it could be with anything. If do too much of it or get too much of it, and you just get burnt out. In school, they call it senoritis. It's all the same thing.

But now that I haven't cooked in almost three months, I kinda miss it. I don't dare try yet because I'm having some trust issues with my stomach still. But I miss creating something. I miss seeing the end results - and even most of the time my end result turned out to be pretty decent. I kinda miss eating real food. My stomach being what it has lately hasn't really allowed me a lot of meal food. And certainly not cooking it. Considering after I get done handling it and smelling it, I can't even get myself to choke it down no matter how much I wanted it in the first. You can see why I haven't been too crazy about cooking. Why spend all that time cooking it if I can't even eat it?!

But the point of this was not to talk about what I can and can't eat. (Look for an upcoming post about eating during pregnancy for that). The point of this was about cooking and how I have missed it. And I truly do look forward to getting back into the swing of things. I look forward to cooking full meals and being able to eat full meals again. But when I get back to it, I'm setting a mission for myself. My mission is to really learn how to cook. I can cook decent. I hold my own. I have definitely gotten better in the kitchen. But I aim to be a strong, confident cook. I want to look at a recipe I've never done and not be completely scared to even try it because there's a technique or something else that I have never tried or used.

So I bet you're wondering why I suddenly want to learn to cook? We'll say learn to cook, even though I already "know" how to cook. There is just so much more that I don't know. But I digress, the inspiration behind this mission I have given myself is that I watched Julie & Julia. Where else do I get so inspired to cook? If I could learn to cook just half as well as these women in the movie then I would be happy.

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In fact, I even own Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Of course I haven't tried making anything out of it yet, but I own. I marked quite a few recipes that I would love to try, but I seem to be missing the nerve (and the stomach) to actually give it a shot. But I hope to in the very near future give a few of these recipes a shot. I hope to conquer a few new, harder recipes. Of course, all that is put on hold for when my appetite comes back fully and I feel less queasy all the time.

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So the point of me posting now? I'm hoping this gives me accountability. Sometimes proclaiming to the world that you are going to do something helps to actually push you to go after what you want. And right now, what I want is to cook. (Well, I want a house too but that's neither here nor there). My goal isn't to be Julia Child or cook my way through her cookbook. My goal is to just cook. My goal is to try new things. My goal is to become a stronger, more confident cook.

So I hope you stick around and in the next few months 'How to Boil Water' and 'Eat Dessert First' will start showing back up. Hopefully with more challenging recipes. I'm definitely not afraid to fail when it comes to cooking (because I've done that several times), so that means that I'm ready and willing to jump in both feet, eyes open into mastering the art of cooking....just as soon as the morning sickness passes.