Frustrated Foodie

Work has been attempting to eat my life, so I decided to claim some time back for myself with a couple of girlfriends. We saw Julie and Julia, and we all really enjoyed it. The basic premise comes from a blog written by Julie Powell, who spent a year cooking her way through ALL the recipes in Julia Child's famous book.

I am a total foodie, eternally frustrated by my lack of cooking skills. Like Julia, I love to eat, but I do not have her ambition in the kitchen. I would happily work harder at the office, where I am competent, to afford to eat in good restaurants and have other people do the cooking.

I did spend about 4 months seriously trying to learn to cook better. I wasn't working my way through Julia, they were just your basic Betty Crocker recipes, or Rachel Ray, or things that looked promising from the food section of the newspaper or magazines. If I started early on a weekend, I could put something new and tasty on the table by dinnertime...only to have Barley turn his nose up at it and refuse to eat. Or he would charm us all with lovely retching noises, or his gagging reflex would kick in as soon as he smelled the new food. And sometimes, even intrepid Teddy, who would try anything, would admit he didn't like it either.

Mostly DH and Teddy were appreciative, but doing all that work for the risk of 25 to 50% of my audience refusing to eat was just too discouraging an experience. Even DH is not the most adventuresome diner. He is famous for refusing to eat anything but white rice during a family trip to San Francisco's Chinatown--and asking the waiter for some butter to put on it.

He's come a long way since then--Thank Goodness!--but when you consider he married a Korean woman who loves kimchee and dried seaweed...you can see the inherent food conflicts at our dinner table.

I love to blame DH for Barley's pickiness, but I do recall a few times as a child myself, aggravating my mother by refusing to eat the dinner she had prepared that night. Then again, Mom was not cooking any of Julia Child's recipes--that's for sure! Whatever was for dinner, it was the job of us kids to "pick a vegetable" from the pantry--whatever CAN we wanted! Cooking fresh broccoli in our house meant boiling it until it started dissolving in the pot...NO SURPRISE I refused to eat it!

Both my brothers had the wisdom to marry GREAT cooks. I always ate very well when we went over to their houses--despite my mother complaining what a picky eater I was.

My brother has actually learned a few tricks in the kitchen himself. So, my own reputation is on the line this coming weekend--as I must prove to my brother that his little sister really can put edible food on the table--despite my upbringing! Wish me luck, folks!