Culinary Delights

It's been kind of a running joke in my family that I am the diva who can't really cook. Sure, I had about three random sure fire dishes: chicken schnitzel, turkey pie with red garlic mashed potatoes, and ramen. I don't know whether its my advanced age (over 25:-) or what, but I've turned a culinary corner. I now feel that I can cook, and that I can cook quite well.

I was talking to my friend Matt at work on Friday. He is a year older than me and his wife just had a little baby girl. We both served in the military and have similar stories of being injured pretty early off. Well, for some reason, we started sharing our experiences and how difficult it is to live with the residuals of an injury. Even though I've improved some, I know I will never be the same as I was before I joined the Army. We talked about things we love to do that we probably wont be able to do again. For him, its running in the morning (wow, I can't say I'd ever mourn not being able to run, but to each his own!) For me, its Irish Step Dancing. I took Irish Step Dancing for a few months several years ago, and I had so much fun doing it that I've always planned on taking lessons again. Now that my knees are all messed up, I don't see myself realisti cally doing that again. It was kind of cathartic for both of us to talk, and he brought up a really good point. He told me that even if you lose something you loved doing, the trick is to put all that energy into something new and find something new to love. For me, that has become cooking. Instead of being a chore that I really don't want to do, its become a little bit like art for me. The kitchen is a place for me to experiement, mess up, start again, and perfect something. Its something I can do and its adding a lot of joy to my life right now. Culinary victories are a big deal. In the past three days, I have made homemade alfredo sauce and my very first cake from scratch, and they both turned out great! However, the fact they turned out great isn't really the point. The fact is that I tried something that used to really intimidate me. I took the chance that my sauce would taste like paper mache paste and my cake wouldn't rise, and I found a new challenge, and something I really love to do. I guess when life hands you lemons you really do make lemonaide!