(Author’s note:  I have been very serious in my essays these last many months.  Since this has been a Very Tough Year, I thought I would end on a more humorous note!  I am so grateful for all of you.  Thank you for choosing to spend your time reading my essays and giving me such wonderful feedback.  Have a safe and happy holiday season!)

As many of you know, I recently discovered the Joy of Cooking.  No, not the cook book.  The ACTUAL joy of cooking.  I had always been intimidated by the kitchen.  When I was in high school, instead of taking Home Economics, I took a third year of chemistry.  I was similarly reluctant to learn from my Mom as a kid.  As an adult, I marveled at what wonderful cooks my sisters and best friend were—and became even more loath to try to learn.  Over the years, I learned to make only a few simple things:  a beef stew, chicken rice soup (all Jewish women make this; it’s in the Handbook), a salad, a hamburger.

A few years ago, my sisters-in-law bought us a gift of a box of meal kits from Blue Apron.  I became hooked.  The recipes were easy to follow but more importantly gave me many little tips on how to prepare ingredients and put them together into a meal.  My confidence grew as I began to make things that were more than “just edible”!  The mystery around cooking started to melt away.

Then, Trish and I joined Weight Watchers.  A cornerstone of that program is cooking your own meals from whole foods.  And they provide access to recipes galore!  I am not a creative cook, mind you.  I’m not one of those people who can look in the fridge, pull out a tomato, a wayward grape, an old pork chop and a pint of sour cream nearing its expiration date and build a three star Michelin meal around them.  But I can follow a recipe well and I’ve learned enough tricks to make things taste good, although Trish says I never add enough salt.  Or pepper.

Big Food has worked hard and spent heavily on advertising to convince us that we are too busy to cook and that people who do cook a lot are either retired or otherwise not contributing significantly to society.  Cooking, they told us, was for “fun”.  Putting food on the table for a family every night, if you were a “normal” person, required the assistance of their processed and packaged foods.  Nonsense, I say!  Cooking from whole foods can be as straightforward and rewarding as you choose it to be.  And it really does not need to take hours.

There are a few useful things to know, however.  Herewith, I share a few key observations from a new cook.  Bon Appetit!

• 50% of cooking is chopping onions.
• Another 25% of cooking is chopping other things.
• True courage is taking a very sharp, very large knife in hand and cutting open a spaghetti squash.
• Speaking of sharp knives, spend some real bucks and get yourself a top notch set of chef knives.  I had bought a set from Pampered Chef many moons ago, supporting a friend who had a Pampered Chef party.  Best dang purchase I ever made—even if I didn’t appreciate it until 15+ years later. 
• Same comment regarding a good skillet.  I spent an outrageous amount of money on one from Our Place (it was even a 50% off Deals and Steals from GMA) but it’s worth every penny.
• Never let ANYONE touch your good knives.  Or your good skillet.  Trish put one of my good knives in the dishwasher once.  I freaked out.  Fortunately, I rescued it in time.  She has not touched one of my good knives since. (Sorry, honey.)
• Clean up as you go—even if someone else has the responsibility to clean since you’ve cooked.  One, you may need some of those items again.  Two, it just feels nice to have a clean sink.  Three, it will keep you from moving too quickly to the next step in a recipe when something needs time to develop.  And, four, it will keep people from touching your good knives.
• When you are making a soup or a stew:  Once you’ve sauteed onions, add the spices and “toast” them onto the onions for a minute before adding liquid and other items.  It’s stunning how that brings together, and brings out, the flavors.
• Similarly, I have learned to worship at the alter of the Holy Trinity: onions, carrots, celery.  I buy bags of them, now, with no specific recipe in mind and actually use them up before they go bad!
• You can learn how to do anything cooking-wise from YouTube.  Want to peel a kiwi? YouTube.  Want to cut into a butternut squash?  YouTube.  Want to root an avocado pit?  YouTube.  I could go on.
• If you start cooking more from whole foods, expect to go to the grocery store at least 2-3 times per week.  Don’t worry—the produce section is an excellent place to social distance.  Never a big crowd.  The frequency is partly due to the limited shelf life of fresh produce and partly due to meal planning only 2-3 days at a time.  Otherwise it gets overwhelming.  And you’d need another refrigerator.
• Prep all your materials before you start cooking.  Yes, it can be a pain and you just want to get going, but there is nothing worse that needing to add something that you haven’t chopped yet or gotten out of the cabinet or brought up from your stash downstairs.
• It is natural to talk to yourself while cooking.  In fact, it is also natural to pretend you are hosting a cooking show, sharing your tips and tricks with your loyal audience.  This is even more fun when you do your prep properly and have all your ingredients lined up in little dishes.
• An immersion blender is the reciprocating saw of kitchen tools—most fun ever!
• Get a good meat thermometer.  There is nothing scarier than looking sideways at a chicken breast and wondering if it’s cooked enough.
• A mandolin slicer is as dangerous as it sounds.  I have spent the last two weeks rebandaging a wound on Trish’s thumb that really should have had stitches.
• Having a dog would be helpful.  As careful as you might be when chopping and transferring—and I decidedly am not—things will drop on the floor.  A dog will quickly vacuum that up.  Cats?  Not so much.  While they are my constant companions in the kitchen, their main goal is to quietly lie down behind me and try to trip me.  Oh, and see if there might be some fresh chicken breast meat or water from a tuna can appearing.  Anything else that ends up on the floor just gets sniffed at with disdain.
• Roasting vegetables has changed my life.  Why did I ever nuke or boil?  A red onion, some cherry tomatoes, a range of cruciferous veggies and/or potatoes and/or squashes; some olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cooking truly has become my love language.  I so enjoy cooking for those I love, especially now that I’ve gained some confidence in the kitchen.  It’s also a reminder that we humans are lifelong learners.  There is a big difference between saying you can’t cook and you don’t cook.  If you want to learn how to do something, you can.  It’s just a matter of priorities and commitment, which we have discussed at length.  Start small but challenge yourself.  And don’t give up.  You, too, might be able to make potato leek soup that is the bomb!