Cooking.

I should put timestamps on this thing. I have no idea how the whole, blog publishing thing works on blogger but it'll say I wrote something on Saturday even though I hit publish post on 12 AM Sunday. I don't know.

Tuesday 8:02 PM

Today I ate a grilled cheese sandwich with a bowl of microwaved ramen. I cannot enjoy food in my apartment for the following reasons:

A) An inability to cook.
Howdy. I can broil, pan-fry, bake, and roast meat. I make a good steak, a decent chicken, and a pretty alright burger. And in any other instance it'd be okay. But for me it's not. I want to make restaurant food, things rich in flavor. I attempt to make marinades that are passable, but it wouldn't wow the socks off anyone I serve it to. They'll eat my food, politely telling me that "it's good." But I want someone to pause, and exclaim about how "that's good!" Not only that, I don't even have a concentration to cook in! I don't pertain to a specific region, or style. I just grab at any recipe that tickles my fancy, so one day I'll be eating pancit and the next day, a hamburger. I need to get my flavors straight.

B) A lack of money to buy good ingredients.
Spices are expensive. The best cuts of meat are expensive. The best kinds of cheese? Too much for me. I would love to shop at Trader Joe's, go to my local butcher, get the good stuff. But the good stuff puts dents in my wallet, and when you're making $9.00 an hour you really can't afford to be eating freshly imported anything. So here I am, eating store-brought bread, cheese, cereal... when I fry meat there's no flavor, and I'm practically dumping scoops of salt, pepper, and seasoning on it. I am getting sick of this bullshit manufactured ground beef. I'd grind my own beef and have it soak in a nicely prepared marinade if not for...

C) A lack of time.
After work I'm tired. After school I'm tired. I don't want to come home and spend another hour preparing something I'll enjoy for 20 minutes! I want instant gratification! I don't know how anyone pertains to schedules. It's way too hard to say to yourself, "I'm going to do this at the end of the day" and actually do it! But then that comes to my next point.

D) I'm pretty lazy.
Whoops.

I like the idea of the renaissance man. You know, the guy that can do anything. It's a movement forward. I like to envision scenarios with me in a nice collared shirt, sleeves rolled up, serving something great. Instead I'm balancing a grilled cheese sandwich on a spatula and cursing when I drop it on the floor. I want to get better at cooking though, because I keep thinking it'll help me become less dependent on others. I mean, I have no assured food source this year, and I can't keep eating fast food all the time, I'll get chubs. And keeping with the trends of the times, considering that I'm a humanities major, I probably won't be the breadmaker of the house, so I figure... at least I can bake bread, yeah?

(Yeah.)