Cooking: Art or Chore?

Jonny and I go through cycles of cooking. Some weeks we are horrible at cooking, but other weeks we will cook up to 6 dinners at home. Our favorite recipes include:

Pasta with peas, asparagus, butter lettuce, and prosciutto (Bon Appetit, April ‘09)
Buttermilk spice cake with pear compote and crème fraiche (BA, March ‘10)
Arugula salad with caramelized onions, goat cheese, and candied walnuts (BA,March‘10)
Grilled cheese and short rib sandwiches with pickled caramelized onions and arugula (BA, Feb. ’10) [Above]
East Indian coconut sauce (Cooking at the Natural Café in Santa Fe, recommended by Camille)
Creamy curry sauce (Cooking at the Natural Café…)
Spaghetti alla carbonara (Cook’s Illustrated, The Best Italian Classics)
Poppy seed bread (A Pinch of Salt Lake)
Caesar salad with pancetta (Barefoot Contessa: Parties)
California pizzas (Parties)
Lemon bars (Parties)
Chicken stew with biscuits (Barefoot Contessa: Family Style)
Lasagna with turkey sausage (Family Style)
Linguine with shrimp scampi (Family Style)
Raspberry cheesecake (Family Style)
Frozen key Lime Pie (Family Style)
Potato basil frittata (Family Style)
Challah French toast (Family Style)
Broccoli and bow ties (Family Style)
Italian wedding soup (Barefoot Contessa: Back to the Basics)
Truffled filet of beef sandwiches (Back to the Basics)
Tagliarelle with truffle butter (Back to the Basics)
Watercress, pear, and blue cheese salad (Junior League Centennial Coobook)
Lemon chicken breasts (Junior League)
Dave Spendlove’s Salmon (Jonny’s favorite fish, with butter and Cabella’s Plank Salmon seasoning)

We will be really good for a little bit at cooking meals like these, but then life gets busy, we get tired, and we then eat out for every meal except breakfast. Why the inconsistency?

Frankly, for just two people, it is often cheaper to eat out, and much more convenient. Plus, we don’t get stuck eating leftover lasagna for three days. Those reasons alone make it hard to cook at home sometimes. However, we have found two big benefits to cooking at home: It is good practice for cooking for a future family; and in the long run it is much healthier.

Family meals: Cooking home meals in the future is important to Jonny and me. The fact that it brings the whole family together in the evenings is important. Also, as the number of mouths that must be fed increases, I imagine it becomes more economical to eat at home. And when you cook for a family, you no longer get stuck with all the leftovers (or at least there are more mouths to eat the leftovers).

The health factor: Jonny will often say after cooking a meal at home, “isn’t it nice to know exactly what is going into the food we eat?” It’s true, there are no hidden ingredients.

So we have found that the positives of cooking outweigh the negatives, and we have invested in cooking. Jonny actually looks at it as more of an art, where it is still much more like a chore for me. If we cook together I find it enjoyable, but not when I do it alone. Jonny has bought us plenty of cookbooks, picked out favorite family recipes, and we have even subscribed to a few cooking magazines. Jonny probably calls Gretta and Camille at least once a week with cooking questions. And when I occasionally cook alone, I call my mom (yes mom, I don’t often cook alone). I do have to say that I find the complete process of doing our own buying, cooking, and cleaning to be very satisfying though. Hopefully as we do this more and more, it will become easier for me and more enjoyable(?).