The Joy of Eating

I'm not sure that I have ever mentioned this but at best I am a passable cook. At worst I am a terrible cook. Mostly I just hate cooking. It just doesn't do it for me. I appreciate other people's good cooking. I'd rather have someone else cook for me in just about every situation. Too bad for me that it is very rare that someone else cooks for me. DH doesn't cook for the most part and given the state of our finances lately, no one else is getting the meals on our table either. DH and I fantasize that one day when the kids move out we will probably cook once or twice a week at most and leave the rest of the week's cooking to people who do it professionally. But for the here and now I am the cook.

I struggle with trying to plan out my meals for the week. Because of my avoidance of cooking I'm usually spending time at about 6pm each night scouring my fridge for something (anything!!) to put on the table that night. This leads to a lot of even worse cooking than I am normally capable of and a lot of calls to take out. So in light of trying to save money I am trying to plan out the menu a week in advance and actually be aware of what I need to cook and if I have to thaw anything. If only the kids ate anything other than hot dogs, grilled cheese, pizza, and chicken.

Lately I am trying to eat healthier. This is because my usual diet is chocolate with a bunch of other fattening and bad for you foods thrown in for good measure. And it is obvious from my waistline that this approach to eating isn't doing me any good. Hence, the diet begins. Several years ago, before I had kids I did weight watchers for awhile and lost 15 pounds. Now those pounds are back so it was back to my weight watchers books I went to try to figure out what to eat and how to cut down. Here is the problem with dieting - you can't really enjoy food. Everything you eat is carefully planned to be light on something - calories, carbs or sugar. All the stuff that really tastes any good. So you end up eating a lot of food that tastes passable but not great and then you can't even compensate for it by eating a good dessert. And most of the time you walk around feeling hungry and wishing you could eat more. At least that's how it is for me. If I could cook this might be easier. A friend of mine has been on South Beach for quite awhile and lost a bunch of weight but she can cook so her food actually tastes good. But mostly I think diets just suck. And they suck all the joy out of eating.

I am convinced that my bad cooking is a result of me not having had a play kitchen when I was a little girl. C is cooking all the time in her kitchen and I hope one day to enjoy many real meals that she can actually cook. I will confess the plastic pizza she brings me is barely edible now, but I have high hopes for her.

For now I dream of my own personal chef, a lot of chocolate, and some liposuction.