Last night I cooked. We've come a long way from the days when I couldn't actually manage to make a toasted bagel with peanut butter without covering myself, the cat, the furniture and even the blinds in peanut butter. Remember the first time I made pancakes? That was pretty amazing.
I've mastered stir-frying somewhere in the interum. In my own haphazard little way, I can toss some vegetables into a skillet and add a packet of something and call that a meal (pesto = Italian delight, taco seasoning = Mexican Delight, brown rice, tofu and taco seasoning = Casserole Delight). Steady named the few meals I turn out, and now we have Delightful meals every day.
(He helps. He would cook the vegetables, but he's a bit more, uh, detail-oriented than I am in the kitchen and it would take at least three times as long to make the same things. So, he does the starchy part of the meal, rice or pasta or whatever, and he makes sure there are things like clean plates and forks when it's time to eat, because he's also more detail-oriented about the cleanliness of the things we eat off of...)
Yeah, so, last night I cooked. Bean Curd Homestyle. It involved a recipe. I used a recipe once when a college boyfriend and I were making dinner for his parents, and right as they walked up the stairs into the kitchen, there was a grease fire. He only left me unattended for two minutes...
I cooked with a recipe. Almost all by myself. I cut up the tofu on Tuesday, and drained it and froze it and thawed it all day yesterday and blotted, and, y'all, I was cooking. I fried tofu. I even dipped it in egg first, something that the recipe didn't call for. (I was afraid if it wasn't crunchy enough, the tofu would not be popular because someone who lives here cares very deeply about the texture of his food.) I put ingredients into the skillet in a set order. I made a sauce, and it did not originate in a packet.
I completely forgot that we might want some rice or something for our bean curd, but whatever. I cooked. Steady chopped a pepper and assisted me a bit, but then he had to leave the room, because I am messy in the kitchen.
"Well, the vegetables are hot." "What?" "Two of them just fell on my feet. They're hot!" [exhales heavily, mutters a bit, leaves the room]
It was actually very good. We ate it all. I cooked!
