I Am No Cook, But I Can Follow Directions
I am no cook but I can follow directions. This sums up my cooking ability to a tee. Since moving out I have gradually become more adventurous in the kitchen and even started experimenting with some of my favourite dishes to make them my own. In every instance, it has begun with a cookbook or a quick search online, combined with a leap of faith.
At this point, you have probably worked out the theme for this post… cooking. Over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, I decided to tick off two items on The Edison Project list: Item 26 – Cook a meal for my mum, and Item 80 – Cook a full Sunday roast. The smartest strategy would be to cook my mum a Sunday roast and hit two birds with one stone, but I am not the smartest. I kept both items separate. The reason being, I did not want my mum to be a test subject. Not all of my ventures in the kitchen are a success.
Cooking for your mum may seem like a simple task, but I cannot recall making anything more challenging than beans on toast or a frozen pizza. The prerequisites for this item were to cook something more adventurous with fresh ingredients and to ensure it was not linked to a special
occasion e.g. Mother’s Day. Luckily my mum was keen to try my vegetarian stir-fry that I had discovered in January in completing Item #87 – Be a vegetarian for one month. This was a dish I was very comfortable with having cooked it a number of times by this point.
The second item in this post was to cook the Sunday roast. Following a Jamie Oliver recipe, I found this surprisingly simple. It was so simple that I was frustrated with myself for not attempting a roast sooner. I layered the base of a baking tray with cleaned, cut and seasoned vegetables, and then laid a seasoned beef joint on top before putting in the oven to roast. This was served with Yorkshire puddings and gravy. There was nothing any more complicated than that.
Photograph by Nicholas Moon
I am keen to hear from all those reading my blog, so I invite you to leave comments or make contact.
Since commencing The Edison Project some of the most rewarding experiences have been those most accessible, those items that anyone can do, but for whatever reason have escaped me to date. Many may see these experiences as nothing special, but at the same time, there will be plenty of people in a similar boat to me. Experimenting in the kitchen is something that initially did not come naturally to me, but The Edison Project gave me the impetus to go beyond my comfort zone. I encourage everyone to consider this in their own lists. And on that note, I will conclude this post. It should not be long until my next post given I have a number of items in my backlog of completed items.