"There are a lot of dishes in hell"

Because burned onions and moments of high frustration notwithstanding, our food is good and nourishing, and our kitchen is the heart of our home.

Nicole Montesano says in this article that cooking is always worthwhile whether it's fun or not. It pretty much sums up how I've been feeling about cooking lately.

We have fallen into a cooking routine that is not necessarily bad. It just gets boring after a while. I cook the same dishes on a regular basis: pork chops, roast beef, fried chicken, with the occasional stirfry and soup thrown in between. I realized, and my daughters have noticed it too, that I have just been too tired to be interested in food. I no longer try to search out different cuts of meat than the usual stuff at the grocery store. It's been a while since I shopped at a foodie market. I hardly even visited the farmer's market this year! No wonder my cooking has been in a rut!

This passage in the article says all that I have been feeling about cooking:

I like to cook. Some people have been known to interpret this to mean I would like to cook at every possible opportunity.

That interpretation is wrong.

Cooking when I'm tired, in a hurry and/or stressed doesn't have much appeal for me, either. Sometimes it's soothing and calming. Sometimes it isn't, and everything you heat burns, you keep tripping over the dog, you forget the salt and spill things, and you wind up highly frustrated.

Not long ago, we ate completely unseasoned spaghetti sauce. It wasn't bad, with salt sprinkled on top ... .

Some nights, I cook not for joy, but so that we can eat.

Lately, I've been preheating cast iron pans and then forgetting to use them, and letting the teakettle boil dry after forgetting I was intending to make tea. This may be a sign. Possibly that we should buy another fire extinguisher, at the rate I seem to be going.

All of which is meant to say, that just because I like to cook does not make every moment in the kitchen an eternity of bliss.

Occasionally, it's a glimpse through the gates of hell.

There are a lot of dirty dishes in hell.

And you can never find a potholder when you need one.

So if cooking is not your thing, take heart. Some days, it isn't anybody's thing.

Visit our other blogs:
Amoores.com
Cooked from the Heart - our new food blog
Our New Backyard - garden & photo blog
Found Not Lost - about all the things we 'find' worth talking about