Beans
I wonder how many people know that I love to cook. I don’t talk about it frequently. I think I’m secretly ashamed of it. Maybe it’s because the image of a mother slaving over the stove for an ungrateful family is an image my mother railed against when I was growing up. Maybe it’s because I’m a teensy bit uncomfortable with my post-pregnancy body and don’t want to seem like the overweight woman eating an ice cream cone in a van I saw the other day. Maybe it’s because as much as I like to pretend, I’m really not very good at it. Unless I play it very safe, my cooking is usually a disaster.
But whatever reason my reason for not talking about food, I’m over it. I love to cook. There is something so satisfying about taking ingredients, combining them, and turning them into something infinitely greater than its parts. I remember making sarmale with my mini-missionary on p-day and feeling incredibly proud to have a huge pot of meat and rice stuffed cabbage leaves. Okay, Sora Vasile did her share of the work as well. But I love the feeling I get when I cook something great. Perhaps it’s the same feeling Michelangelo felt when he completed La Pieta. Well, probably not, because my cooking involves no originality. Maybe it’s the feeling a six-year old gets when he successfully traces his favorite comic book character and his mom sticks it up on the fridge. Whatever, it feels good.
And, I have to admit, I like cooking for my man. I feel like I just admitted for the first time that I am an alcoholic. Not that I have ever admitted that I’m an alcoholic. And not that I am an alcoholic. I’m not. I just like to have my daily shot of scotch. What’s wrong with that?
Anyway, I discovered recently that I love to cook beans. Yep, that’s right. Beans. Sure, you can get them cheap in a can, but they’re dirt cheap when I make them myself. And buying a can and opening it up will never give me a sense of accomplishment. Maybe it will for my brothers, which is fine. But not for me.
I was always a bit intimidated by bags of beans at the store. But then, I got a slow cooker. And some courage. I bought beans. I put them in the slow cooker with lots of water and a little salt. I turned the slow cooker on high. I went to bed. In the morning, I had beans. Lots of them. It felt good.
4 comments:
I love this post. Michaelangelo or comic book character, you're doing a great job.
I learned that beans were dirt cheap when my companion lived off one bag for three months. She cooked them all and then made her own tortillas and froze literally 100 burritos in plastic bags and ate them for every meal.
Amazing.
Cooking is the best! It's probably easier for me to admit it because I'm a man and not having to fight gender roles and stereotyping...but I think we should all get over our fear of not talking about food.
My hang-up on cooking dry beans is that I don't think about it until—at the earliest—a few hours before dinner, and all the instructions say to "soak overnight." But a slow cooker! That's brilliant! Now I will try.
I love the way you write.
I also enjoy some scotch in the morning. Ha!
Aprilynne makes two different soups for us using black beans. We originally had dozens of bags of dry beans from WIC and didn't know what to do with them (apologizing in advance for the shameless product endorsement...) but my mother gave us a Duromatic pressure cooker for Christmas one year. It cooks dry beans in 30 minutes, no joke. They're kind of expensive but the soups are fabulous, and don't even have to be prepped a day in advance!
I love having a wife who cooks good meals for my family--just another way to be proud of her and her talents. So I'm sure your husband appreciates your efforts.
Post a Comment