2000-04-25

Background Music: Ella Fitzgerald, Oh, Lady, Be Good! Best of the Gershwin Songbook. Not as brilliant as the Cole Porter Songbooks, in my opinion, but it’s not like this woman ever hit a flat note in her life. It was one of my greatest pleasures, and deepest regrets, to have seen her sing once, but only once, in my life. She was truly The Queen.

So here’s the thing.

As I get older, it becomes more and more clear to me that I am a complete and utter food slut. There is nothing that wins me over faster than a scrumptious meal.

Good food sends me into little spasms of ecstasy that generally result in my looking up from my plate to discover that the entire table is staring at me because I have been unconsciously humming happy food noises over my meal.

I ate at a fabulous Indian restaurant for lunch today. The buffet was a long linen-covered trail of manna from heaven, and I swear, if the chef had come out to my table and said, "Hey lady, you like that sag paneer? How about that navratan korma? If you want another bite of that murg kandae, you can kiss my feet first", I'd be on the floor in two seconds, puckering up.

Which just leads me to believe that I am going to have to figure out this cooking thing, once and for all.

I’ve mentioned before in this journal that I don’t cook much. Using the word ‘much’ is probably cheating on my part. If I turn on the gas stove twice a month to do anything other than boil water for pasta, then I must be trying to save money by not eating out.

Hey, it’s simple. I am lazy. I don’t like touching raw meat. I prefer to snack every two hours instead of sit down to a full meal three times a day. I am lazy. Chips and salsa are high on my list of Favorite Things To Have For Dinner. I have to follow a recipe to cook anything, and holding a cookbook open flat with my elbow while trying to chop up fresh dill is not my idea of a good time.

Did I mention the lazy thing?

But I am just going to have to suck it up and figure out how to sauté and broil and baste and all those other arcane and witchcraft-like techniques that were listed in my mother’s The Way to Cook by Julia Child. That book was two inches thick, very intimidating and perhaps the only volume in existence that, if you placed it in front of me, I would have no desire whatsoever to read it.

The problem is that J. cooks.

He cooks, and he cooks well and often. He is one of those people that can go wandering through a kitchen, pulling ingredients off of shelves and out of the pantry and refrigerator and start tossing them together in a pan, and then 15 minutes later there’s this phenomenal meal sliding onto your plate.

“And your issue with this paragon of culinary skill is exactly what?” I hear you asking. And, “Jesus, how spoiled does this chick need to be?”

Yeah, at first the idea of having this guy who would cook for me all the time sounded great to me too. Great food every time I turn around, and I’d do all the dirty dishes in an attempt to make the trade fair.

But what’s really going to happen is that I will be entirely, one hundred percent, don’t even bother questioning it, at J.’s mercy.

I can picture it now.

I get home around 8pm from work. J. calls out that he is in the kitchen. I can smell something incredibly delicious wafting around the corners. I walk into the kitchen to see J. standing at the oven door, slyly opening it a crack now and then to let me peek in and to let the smells creep out and seduce me.

My mouth waters. My eyes glaze over. I accidentally step on the kitty in the fog of my desire to wrap my tongue and teeth around whatever is sizzling to a perfect finish in the oven.

In my lusting, food slut daze, I agree to a litany of J.’s demands, sexual favors, laundry, eternal responsibility for the litter box, whatever. Mmmmm, dinner is delicious. And when I wake up the next morning, J. hands me a bottle of detergent and the kitty poop scoop, smiles and tells me to get to work.

I gotta learn to cook.