Oh,
crap. I'm nearly 30, and I'm the same shit cook that I was at 20,
slamming whatever into a frying pan and seeing what “meal”
emerges from the smoke. I'm still cooking the components of the meal
in the wrong order and reheating everything, resulting in the
occasional stomach bug. I'm still going to Tesco with no idea what
meals I'm going to make with the food I'm buying, and no idea what
I've still got in stock at home. Having short-term memory
difficulties, like I have, means a simple multi-step task like buying
food or cooking a meal becomes a wholly monstrous affair, with the
potential to morph from a simple kitchen exercise to a domestic
disaster.
When
I was 20 I nearly burned down my student digs. I left something on an
electric hob that really shouldn't have been there. (okay, I was
technically cooking it, but not for consumption.) Cue a small,
toxic-fume-filled kitchen and an angry security guard. I was eating
chip naans three times a week, but I still lost 3kg through
under-eating, and was the lightest I'd been as an adult.
When
I was 28 and I'd only moved into my own flat a few months previously,
I undercooked some lamb's liver. Let's just say I over-familiarised
myself with the toilet. During this time, I possibly forgot to eat
some meals. I worked out LOADS. Yet I put 2kg on due to eating cheap,
salt-laiden food.
When
I look at my life right now, two of my biggest problems are 1) women,
or lack of, and 2) cooking skills, or lack of. (Connection? Perhaps.
You tell me, girls: If a man can cook, is that a turn-on? I suspect
so.) I can't afford cookery classes, and even if I could, my memory
difficulties would cause me to drop behind, and I wouldn't get the
chance I'd need to practice what had gone wrong. (Oh yeah. Third
problem: money.) The Psychology department that helps me with memory
says they can't help me with cookery. So I have to do this myself. I
can't expect a leg up from anyone else. The only knowledge I have
will come from a cookbook I got for my birthday in July, that-
typically- got shoved into a kitchen cupboard a few days later, and
hasn't been read... until now. So from here on, it's just me and
Classics One Step at a Time by Keda Black.
Looking
back through my blog you'll notice that I'm fond of my one-month
challenges- little exercises I do to improve a particular area of my
life in some way. I've been keen to focus on something for a new
challenge recently, but couldn't decide what. I miss people too much
to do the book-reading challenge again. I couldn't find the resources to binge on scriptwriting.
I also have many other challenges and tasks in my life. This week, in
fact, I finished clearing out my college portfolios, the last two
items that I'd left in my bedroom at my mum's. They've been there
since 2001. I kept the best parts- they filled just a couple of Tesco
bags. They're now on a shelf in my flat. I am officially totally
moved out.
Scary
shit.
This
cookbook is going to take longer than a month to get to grips with,
though, especially as I've only just ordered some scales off the
internet. Hopefully each meal won't take more than half an hour to
put together. So here's my challenge for the next few
months- work my way through this cookbook, one meal at a time. I'll
try to find links to the same recipes online, so you can see what I'm
doing. I'll buy the ingredients, cook it, eat it, and review it here.
If I fuck it up, I'll learn from my mistakes. If I don't, then it
must be simple enough for this moron to do. So why not do it with me?
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