Kicking Myself
I’m on a roll. I’ve cooked dinner for friends two nights in a row. The kids are coming tonight. So, that means two more dinners. I may copy one of the menus because it’s easy and fun to do. I have no idea what the other one will be. The friends who came over last night, helped me sort through my skillet collection. Mostly we dumped the damaged non-stick skillets and oiled up my cast iron. I’m making sure it gets into the rotation.
The non-sticks got damaged during that phase of my wife’s dementia when she was beginning to forget the details of why she did things, and I wasn’t paying enough attention. Shame on me. She’d use knives or spoons to clean the skillets of debris. The old non-stick rice pot got scrapped right down to the metal. I finally threw it out. The new one is too cheap and too small, however; so, I’m going to look for a proper one, and try to remember the lesson that when it comes to cooking you need good utensils and cheap ones hardly are.
The nice thing I’ve discovered about cooking proper dinners is how much time it takes to plan and execute the meal. This has value when your days are full of empty space and you’re trying to avoid over thinking whatever issue you’ve decided to overthink. Usually, I’d be out working in the yard which is a great mind-occupier, but it’s cold. I could try baking but that’s too much of a science. Cooking on the other hand allows for a lot of, I wonder what this would taste like? That’s fun because most things taste good. And maybe one day I’ll be able to break free of the recipe and do it like she did it from muscle memory, and I still wish I’d of paid attention when she was alive.
John W. Wilson is the author of the Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale