"Cooking"

I had occasion to visit Bowling Green, Virginia, the other day, the second time my practice has sent me someplace picturesque.   But commenting yet again, after the prior post about Winchester, strikes me as overindulgent.  Is it possible to overdose on a natural high?  I dare say we’ll find out.

The irony is that I don’t consider the practice of law to be a line of work calculated to send you to all sorts of different places.  You’re limited to the courts in the state you’re licensed to practice in, usually the same ones over and over again.  And courts are, by their nature, in cities, generally in the center of town.  Then again, small towns and county seats have their courthouses too…I suppose.   It’s impractical to take and pass 50 state bar exams (+ DC) or even try to waive into all those jurisdictions.  But if you’re an immigration lawyer you can effectively practice nationwide.  But that, I’m not.  Too bad. 

So the topic will be something else.  I’m a bachelor and always have been.  I dare say I’ll die unmarried, but we’ll see.  In any case my two major romantic relationships were with foreign women – Brazilian and Chinese – both of whom were quite capable in the kitchen, and proud of their skills therein.  For my own part, I am right smack in the middle:  not burning water, but no gourmet.

As a practical matter I’m cooking for myself and myself alone, so I have only myself to please and only myself to blame.  I consider my tastes to be bourgeois.   I recall eons ago, talking to my dear departed father – need I qualify this by saying that, he was alive at the time (!) – about class.  “Are we middle class?”  (Look of sincere horror): “No…!  We are lower upper class!”   Not sure how we qualify as such, with no royalty or nobility in the extended family, nor anyone with extensive wealth, nor anyone highly placed in government.  For my part I’m happy to consider myself bourgeois, food included.

At one extreme would be food that doesn’t really need to be cooked at all.  Chips & salsa, sourdough baguettes sliced with habanero or pepper jack cheese slices inside.  Or “cooking with the phone”, now replaced by “cooking with the Internet”, resulting in a Domino’s guy at the front door.   Likewise when others are cooking my Chick-Fil-A, Chipotle, etc.  I won’t take credit for eating what others have cooked.

Next step up, is simple stuff.  Not sure many people would consider this cooking, as we’re talking about preheating the oven, putting the Freschetta, pizza bites, or taquitos in at the required temperature for the required period of time.  Aside from not forgetting about it until you smell something burning, how hard is that?  About as advanced as that gets is pasta – boiling water and letting spaghetti or rigatoni boil for 10-15 minutes, heating the sauce in a separate pot – or cooking chicken breasts with Shake & Bake, more of this business of leaving something in the oven at a specific temperature for a specific period of time, scaling back the time for the accompanying Stovetop, which takes 3-4 minutes for the water to boil and 5 minutes to cook.

At my most advanced are two things.   First is Toll House Cookies, which I would make with my mom.  I’d follow the recipe to the point of adding in the chocolate chips themselves, and she would round them into balls and cook them in the oven, a partnership which remained consistently effective.  

The second is about the only item where I exercised any imagination.  I’d take pita pockets, cut them in half.  Then take those chicken breast strips they give you for salads, stuff a few into the pocket.  Then take Cracker Barrell cheese square slices, cut them across the middle into triangles, and slide those in.  Then cook the whole thing for about 30 seconds in the microwave, which melts the cheese and heats up the chicken.  Delicious.