I’ve never really liked cooking. I live alone and cooking for one is really hard. Grocery stores don’t sell to one person, they sell to families, so I always end up with more than I need and it goes to waste. I was also never taught how to cook. My family ate out (or takeout) a lot and I never hung out in the kitchen to learn.
But now, as part of my self-care practice, I am trying to avoid eating fast food, which has been my go-to for years because 1) it’s easy and quick and 2) I don’t have to cook it. I recently signed up for one of those boxes of food that they send to your house. For a long time, I thought “why would I sign up for that? If someone is going to send food to my house, then they should cook it first.” But I guess there is no time like the present to learn to cook since I’m working from home for the foreseeable future (Thanks COVID).
Today, I made bacon grilled cheese with caramelized onion and carrot fries. Sounds easy, right? Well, caramelizing onions is not the same as boiling water and I’m not a huge fan of carrots. So, bacon and cheese aside, I wasn’t too hopeful about my results.
Turns out, carrot fries are freaking awesome, especially if you slice them pretty thin. And caramelizing onions isn’t all that hard either when you have a list of directions.
About those directions… After the caramelizing was done, the directions said to wash the pan I was using and then turn around and use it to grill the sandwiches. As someone who spent years not making her bed because she couldn’t see the point of making something you were just going to unmake again in a few hours, I found that direction to be ridiculous! Just use the pan again right now while it’s already hot, right?? WRONG.
The sandwiches cooked too quickly, one of them got burnt, and I literally broke an (albeit cheap) spatula trying to turn them over. Yeah. There’s a reason to wash the pan. It’s the same reason to make your bed, actually. For the clean slate. It’s helpful. Lesson learned.
