I’m so awful at post titles!! EEK!
You know what the biggest problem with being gluten free is?
Well what my biggest problem is?
I don’t like to cook. And being Gluten-free requires either a lot of money on pre-packaged gluten free goods (holy moly is it expensive!), eating nothing but vegetables and fruit, or.. getting off yer darn rear-end and actually cooking!
I would say that I hate it, but… I don’t really have it that far of a dislike for it. But often towards the end of the day, or even the middle of the day. I just don’t have the desire to stand around in the kitchen and figure out what I want to make and spend the energy to make it. Yeesh.
I’m not very good at the housewife thing. I’m not even very good at this mom business really. Then when it comes down to it… I don’t really think I’m very good at much. That’s an entirely different story now isn’t it?
Still, There are times when I do enjoy cooking. Particularly when the kids enjoy what I’ve made, but nothing chafes me more than when I spent a chunk of time in the kitchen trying to cook something we’d all enjoy… Only to have someone field some complaint, however petty, about what is being served.
Part of it stems from when I was younger, after we made the trek (that I am still trying to emotionally get over) from sunny So.Cal to crummy NW.WA… well I had to cook a lot. I had no skills, aside from knowing some basics… but it came to be that I had no choice but to be ‘mom’ to my younger two siblings when I was not yet 10. Meaning that I had to do a lot of cooking, cleaning, and handling younger children when I wasn’t even equipped to handle all the other things going on in life.
It sucked. It also left me completely and totally worn out on the idea of giving much of a darn about cooking, cleaning, and wanting to take care of messes. I’d taken care of so many, and under such negative circumstances… that I dread doing these things now. An issue I’ve got to work on.. of course…
Of course, to moms credit every now and again she’d try and be helpful.
One time, she tried to tell me how to make deep fried mozzarella sticks, and fried zucchini slices. I got everything just fine.
Aside from one part “wait until the oil boils” yes, her exact words “and then deep fry them”. I let the oil sit in a pan on the stove, on medium-high for hours. She did mention it would take awhile for the oil to be ready.
Know why? It didn’t BOIL. I was waiting for bubbling!
You’re seeing where this is going right?
The first time I put something in the pan… BWOSH! The oil bubbled up so fast and went all over the stove, and quickly the cheese stick burnt to a crisp, smoke filled the air, and I was in a panic as you can expect from an 12 year old (I think that was my age) who’d just felt like she’d almost set the kitchen on fire with only her and two little kids home!
Of course I learned from that mistake. Oil doesn’t boil, which mom eventually told me after she got mad that I’d caused such an issue. It doesn’t boil in the way water does. But how the heck was I supposed to know that?
Anyway… *ahem*
Still, at the end of the day I can read the back of a package and follow instructions well. So that saved us from completely starving when we (when we had food in the house more than rice and maybe some canned veggies…), and so did the fact that we had a cook book. So I can at least attribute my life from just before 10 until when I was 16 and moved out, to making it so I can actually cook and bake.
Poor Aussie never really had to do much, so once he moved out on his own he really struggled to learn how to do domestic type things… aside from laundry. He’s pretty good at laundry, and I like that. Because another thing I dislike is folding laundry. Though in Australia I guess it’s not common to have clothes dryers, so I got to teach him how to use mine. That was pretty cute though. Then again I’ll wash it, if someone else will fold it. >.>
Anyway, even though we did have a cookbook growing up, you know what I did mostly with that cook book?
Taught myself how to bake.
Sure, I wont claim that I am a master baker *immature gigglesnort at ‘master baker’*, or anything like that. Heck, I only got to take a total of two classes out of all the ones in the Wilton cake decorating class I’d signed up for (the ex-husband was very unhappy with me getting childless time outside of the house…). So I don’t even decorate to perfection. Still, out of all the cooking type things to be done in the kitchen…
I’d take baking over cooking any day of the week!
I think part of it is from when I was growing up. When I would bake something new for my youngest two siblings, my little brother would pretend I was someone on a cooking show, and he was the announcer. Holy ego boost, it made baking fun! Cooking was never that kind of fun for me, it was just ‘we need food, must have food’.
Baking was fun pretend baking show time and I still do this in my head. Pretend I’m on a baking show and there is a camera, and someone is talking about what I am doing. Something similar to when they talk about what is being done on Iron-Chef. But with a lot less crazy stress, fires, and high-paid professionals!
I think I figured out a solution to this dislike of cooking though! One that will teach all four of the kids how to cook things and lightening my load when it comes to meal prep for five and hopefully super soon six people.
Making the kids help!
Sure, I don’t want/need them to always help. But I noticed that when they do, I feel considerably less stressed when I am making things. Probably because I feel like I’m not alone. Shoved into a kitchen while everyone else does fun things they want to do and I have no choice but to be there. You know, like when I was younger?
Maybe that wont be a problem, because this is less of “you have to cook because mom isn’t around and if you don’t no one will really eat”
And it’s a bit more…
Something like this really…
Var during his 'I want to grow my hair out' phase
Does he look forced and unhappy? 😛
I find myself much more pleasant at meal times when if I’m making something that requires multiple steps, that someone helps me. Or even all of the someones. The kids seem to like helping… I just feel reluctant because I don’t want them to grow up with the same ‘I hate doing things because I was forced to!’ feeling that I did.
The passing of the pork-chop.
This is probably a strange photo, and it was taken before we went gluten free. Actually Lisi had control of the camera this particular time, and she managed to get some interesting shots.
We were making Tonkatsu (yummm) and it was Var’s turn to help me with dinner. I soon enough learned that I could actually have two kids help with this progress (one got to flour the pork cutlets, one got to then dip them in egg, and I could do the breadcrumbs), and even better was when I could get three into the act.
Leaving me to be able to do other things like slice up the cabbage, make sure all the sauces are ready.. and the actual deep frying part. You know, because now I know at least how to properly deep fry! 😛 Having a deep fryer helps with that actually *ahem*
I've lost a bit of weight and chopped my hair short since this... But at least I'm not all stressed out and crazy looking!
Yummy Tonkatsu
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