Cooking

My dad forced me to cook for my family for a year. At the time, it definitely was something that was forced upon me: I had no choice. I was in Tennis, had a part time job, took 3 AP classes, and was super involved at church. Now I had to grocery shop? Plan? Cook? Dishes? That's at least an hour of my life every day. How was I supposed to be the mother of my household and be a Senior in High School? Really?

And then somewhere in between I learned to enjoy it. Incorporating leftovers into the night's meal so as to save money and kill the planet a little less. I joked that cooking would be the thing I'd miss most when I moved out, but I wouldn't miss it much, because I'd be in the land of lofty dreams known as college.

The other day a friend of mine came over to my house. We watched Ice Age and I helped her with her English extra credit. Plans for dinner were never made, so I decided that we would have spaghetti: easy, fast, yummy. While my mom was out buying ground beef, I started the water to boil, just to expedite the process. And when it boiled I added the spaghetti. And when my mom brought the ground beef to me, I threw it in the skillet. And all of the sudden I was cooking again and adding pepper and green bell peppers and tiny doses of garlic, using my big blue dutch oven. It was the best spaghetti I've had in 3 months and it reminded me of how desperately I miss cooking.

Yesterday I looked at a cookbook that a friend bought me for my birthday, and I found at least 15 recipes that I'm looking forward to trying out over Christmas break.

Why am I an English major when all I want to do is cook? Oh well, I can cook and read books. My life would be happy.