Reflection

While I did miss eating out at restaurants, I think that my week of cooking was an eye-opening experience for me and I am glad that I did it. When I was making my lunch today, I initially decided to warm up this microwavable meal but it smelled disgusting and I did not eat it. While it was in the microwave, I thought about how I could do something easy such as cooking an egg that could help give it more flavor and make it seem like not a cheap microwavable meal. While I ended up not cooking anything extra, I know that I never would have thought about cooking an egg if I had made this meal last week. My experience kind of reminds me of A. J.'s after he has been doing the rituals for a few months. While we both may not have liked to do these tasks, they did give us some structure to the day and we feel slightly confused when the tasks do not/cannot be completed. With practice the difficult tasks, whether they be praying or cooking, got easier, and they did not seem as threatening as they once were.

I find the process of cooking to be almost like a paradox; I had the freedom to make whatever I wanted do (pizza, fried plantains, spring rolls), but I was also a slave to the kitchen for nearly an hour each night so that I could make the meals I willfully chose. Probably the most obvious thing I have learned from my week is to NEVER trust the time listed on the recipe. "Twenty"minutes usually equates to "most of an hour" unless you have made the recipe before several times. With practice the process of cooking gets easier, such as when my mom puts things in the slow-cooker and she can walk away from the kitchen for hours, but I did not even attempt to do anything of the sort.

It was also hard to think up meals as I got later into the week, and the novelty of the situation went away. It makes me appreciate people who have to think up new meals nearly every day to feed their families. I know I certainly could not have done it. Thankfully there are restaurants that help add variety and make life easier for the home-cookers.

I think that this experience has made me appreciate both food itself and the restaurant industry more and has allowed me to learn some basic recipes that can help me in the future.

Day 7: Last Day

So today is that last day in my week of cooking.

Lunch was simple; it was a turkey-brie-craisin wrap (it might sound strange but cranberries and turkey go really well together--think Thanksgiving). Over the week I've noticed how my meals have become more impulsive and creative and how they have turned out better than expected the majority of the time.

For dinner, I had a hamburger, sweet potato fries, and squash casserole. The first two things were store-bought and there wasn't much preparation for them, but I made the squash casserole from scratch. Again, like most homemade things, it took over an hour to make.

Today was the first time that I had three distinct parts of a meal; normally my meals would consist of things added together to create one big thing such as pizza or pasta. It is interesting to see how the process of making dinner is different when you have to have multiple things going on at once in order to have everything finish at the same time. 

Day 6: Parental Taste Test

Today, I felt confident enough in my cooking skills to make my parents dinner.

I made pasta with tomato sauce. It is a simple meal (and my dad's go-to) that I could use last night's pizza sauce in, but since I added extra ingredients such as Italian sausage and multiple different types of vegetables it became a long, multi-step process. Again, the problem I ran into is the extensive time it takes to prepare all of the ingredients so that they can later be added together.

Over this week, cooking has gradually started to appeal to me artistically. For example, yesterday when I made the pizza the toppings we used were in a great range of colors (red, green, white, yellow) that stood out against the off-white cheese background. Tonight, when I was cooking the vegetables, the colors stood out to me again. The conglomerate of vegetables in the pot reminded me of blobs of color that you might see in an impressionist painting.

Another thing I have learned is the positive and negative aspects of having extra people in the kitchen. Having people in the kitchen can be nice because they can help with the menial tasks such as fetching ingredients but they can also be aggravating because they are underfoot and putzing with things while you are cooking. 

I finished the meal by making the pasta and warming up some garlic bread. The meal turned out really well; my mom, the main cook in my house, called it "really good" and wants to add some of my ingredients into her future sauces. 

Today's meals have highlighted the importance of leftovers to me. Not only did I use leftover pizza sauce in tonight's dinner, but I used leftover chicken from a few days ago to make a chicken salad sandwich. 

Day 5: Pizza!

Today was a lot different than the first half of the week because I made food not only for myself, but for my friends as well.

As you might have guessed, we made pizza, a staple in a teenager's diet.

Pizza pizza!

So excited for pizza

I felt like pizza would be somewhat difficult to make, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy with the strangely rectangular store-bought dough. I made the pizza sauce prior to their arrival and all that was left to do was topping customization and baking. 

It even has cheesy crust!

The pizza turned out a lot better than expected. It was so pretty looking and colorful that you could not tell that it had just been made by three cooking-inept teenagers. However, I did learn that there is such a thing as "too much sauce" which can result in pizza slices collapsing once lifted. 

The "real" dough that my friend brought with him was a lot harder to work with. We had to use a wine bottle to roll out the continually shrinking glob. 

Tossing dough is much harder than it looks in the movies. 

We used this extra dough for dessert pizzas. 

p.s. There's chocolate and marshmallows in the crust

One thing I realized while talking with my friends is that I am not the only kid that has no idea how to cook. All of us will soon be embarking into the "real world" and have no idea how to survive in it. But at least now all of us know how to make pizza. 

Day 4: Midweek

Nothing too special to report today. For dinner I made Szechuan Shrimp and rice. I still find it funny when recipes say that they will take twenty minutes to make and it actually takes me over an hour to make the meal from start to finish. I wonder how much of meals chefs prepare beforehand in restaurants so that they can actually create meals in a reasonable time period. Maybe they have elves or something that do all of the preparations for them or something.

I think I am getting better at cooking. I am not good enough yet that Gordon Ramsey would not yell at me but better than I was at the beginning of the week. My meals are starting to look more legitimate, and I have learned the value of rice. Rice has been my steady companion this week while I have neglected vegetables.

Who needs different colors in food anyway?

Tomorrow should be more exciting food-wise. 

Day 3: Banana vs. Plantain

Until recently, I did not know that there was a difference between bananas and plantains. I thought that a plantain was another name for a fried banana, but they are actually two completely different foods. A plantain can even be considered to be a vegetable. Although the two foods look similar (a plantain looks live a green or over-ripe banana), a plantain is longer, thicker, and starchier than a banana.

Today I made food that surrounded these two different fruits/vegetables. For lunch I made an acai bowl (think of the former Happy Bowl that was downtown). It is essentially a thick smoothie that you garnish with granola, fruit, and other things. Super easy to make. 

They look really pretty too. 

For dinner, I made fried plantains. It was easy, although the very hot oil can go everywhere. 

It is strange how something that looks so much like water in the pan can boil and crackle and change the plantains. 

I am not sure what exactly the difference is in the taste of bananas and plantains, but it was interesting to see how the similar-looking foods could be prepared in completely different ways. 

Day 2: A "Berry" Busy Day

I had a busy day, so today's meals are not too extravagant. I came home for lunch and made a simple sandwich before changing and heading to work. I work at the berry counter at Lewis Strawberry Farms, a staple destination in Wilmington during the spring and summer. It is not too bad of a place to work, although I can't really eat the gorgeous-looking strawberries stacked around me because I have to sell them to customers. Today was the hottest and slowest five hours I have ever had to work; the building is not completely enclosed so all of the workers felt gross and hot the entire time.

Anyway, the last thing I wanted to do after getting off work at 6:30 was to cook dinner. As I drove by restaurants on the way home, I felt like the signs and restaurants seemed brighter and better than normal. Maybe they knew I couldn't have their food this week. Once I got home, I googled some of the easiest things to make (although Real Simple's definition of "easy" still overestimates my skills), and I found a recipe for chicken quesadillas. I had leftover chicken from the night before (hooray for being able to buy chicken in bulk) and made my fastest dinner possibly ever (not including Easy-Mac).

Tonight's meal actually kind of looks like how it is supposed to look!

Having to come home from work and cook made me realize why people eat at fast food restaurants and get take-out so often: after work there is no motivation to do anything else laborious. I just worked for five hours straight, and I did not want to spend another hour working to get food on the table. I wanted food and was too tired to put in much effort.