Cooking

This is another blog post thingy about cooking which makes two or three in a row I think.

I have spent a lot of time in my life cooking cakes and biscuits and things. When I was little it was one of the ways mum spent one on one time with me and my brother and sisters. She was smart and refused to cook with more then one child at a time, now I can see why. I think of all of us, I am the one who enjoys cooking the most, I taught three other kids to cook from scratch (not packets) before I turned 14 and now I cook something with the kids I look after about once a week.

I had stopped cooking for pleasure though, I cooked dinners out of necessity, morning teas and suppers because they were needed and since I moved here, cakes and biscuits because a child wants to make them. I had forgotten the pleasure of just cooking because you feel like it and not for any reason. The difference is time and choice, if it is someone else that suggests cooking, it is their choice of what to make. If it is for a function or event there is a time limit about when and also what you will make. Somehow these take some of the pleasure out.

Now that I am almost entirely in charge of the family dinners (my boss is NOT fighting me for it) I am finding a pleasing kind of responsible feeling, and planning ahead novelty, I had not expected. When I cook just for myself, there is a bit of that, but I can make it when I get hungry, rather then to a time table, and make what I feel like eating, without reference to others.

Cooking by myself while listening to music I like, planning meals for the week and what I will make for afternoon teas, cooking without time pressures, this is a useful and simple pleasure.