kengr

It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

03: Chemistry

If you asked me about whether I can bake or cook, I would tell you no. If you then asked me whether I could follow a recipe, I'd tell you yes, and that I've successfully done it many times. When you point out that following recipe is literally the process of baking or cooking, I'll counter that with the idea that the sign of baking and cooking skill is somehow fixed in my head as being able to look at a basket of ingredients and understand how you could make a tasty meal with them, without the need to refer to recipe, only your own experience and technique. You can tell me that's a ridiculous standard to hold anyone to, and I'll agree with that, as well, and mention that my own head can be stubborn sometimes about what it thinks of as the baseline for being able to claim a skill. Because that kind of skill is not necessarily something that people who can follow recipes deliciously will ever develop, or necessarily desire to develop.

The domestic arts were not being taught that much in schools. There were classes with names like "life skills," which were often about learning how to balance a checkbook and keep track of your accounts, how to calculate what the additional costs of finance charges might be, including the one attached to a revolving credit account (more colloquially known as a credit card), and other skills that were meant to send us out into the world slightly less wide-eyed and terrified at the prospect that we no longer were bound to the school and would be considered, in the eyes of the law, contract or otherwise, as adults who could make life-changing decisions on our own. There were simulations about whether or not someone could live a month on the salary of the career they were thinking about going in to, which were also disguised ever so slightly as recruitment efforts to various places or career options, including the military. But at no point did I learn how to cook things while in school. I learned a little about it, using microwave technology and the conventional oven to do things like cook pot pies or make popcorn or other snack foods, but while I was a child, my stay-at-home mother handled the cooking, and while I was an undergraduate, I was on the dormitory meal plans, which covered most of my meals, and I could use some credit to have sandwiches or other such things for the one meal the dorm plan didn't cover. So, theoretically, I could avoid having to learn how to cook until I left the dormitories, and even then, I could have managed to avoid it by trading out cooking duties for other chores in the arrangements that I had while living with other college students. I didn't do that, but neither did I get much of an education in the arts of cooking and of shopping for myself. Not least because the last place I was in for graduate school had a strong infestation of ants, and those ants liked to turn up in insufficiently sealed cracker and cereal boxes. So I learned which foods not to buy because they attracted the ants to them.

Having left the tender illusions of schooling and moving myself to the Dragon Conspiracy Territory, with a job in hand, and soon, an apartment of my own, the lessons I had learned about frugality and making the dollar stretch meant that not only was I going to consider "eating out" to be a great luxury, it meant that I was going to have to cut back on the amount of already-prepared meals and foods and start using some of my spare time to cook up food that I would take for lunches to work. I had sandwich makings, and my indulgence, such that it was, was frozen pizza with a mozzarella cheese-filled outer crust, and some microwave meals for those nights when I was going to get home from work too tired to do much more than cook up that food and possibly vegetate or otherwise get caught up on the Internet's doings for the day.

(When I was in the relationship that hurt me, it was a point of pride for my ex that she did the cooking and feeding of me, and that I should not have to worry about it. Even when she was doing a fair amount of overspending the budget I vainly kept trying to set and explain to her that we had to adhere to, because my money was not infinite and I knew that if we got in the habit of overspending because she had money to draw on, it would hurt a lot when that money ran out completely. My attempts were all failures, because my ex was looking for excuses not to have to hold to limits and also told me that she believed anything other than a firm no was an invitation for her to more strongly argue her position. After telling me this, she would get unhappy and sulky when I switched to firm nos about things that I had been trying to use polite nos for. The no hadn't changed, but once she told me how to deliver it so that she would listen, that's what I used.)

However, 2dlife took, well, maybe not pity on me, but an interest, because C was skilled in the arts and was willing to teach someone who hadn't collected the necessary parts of being able to follow recipe and understand what techniques were being called for. This was meant both as skill-building and as lowering the intimidation factor toward cooking, because it's much harder to think of cooking as a daunting task when you can keep turning out delicious food by following the instructions in front of you. Under C's direction and instructional material, I made quiche. (The first one was perfect and delicious, and every quiche I made after that was chasing that first perfection. They were all still good, but they weren't exactly like the first perfect one.) I made braised chicken, and I made goulash, and stews, and I tried to make breaded, battered, and fried chicken, which didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, because while I'd made things, I hadn't made them to stick to the chunks of chicken I had as well as I wanted them to. And with each new item, I had learned new technique for preparation or cooking, to the point that by the time C was done walking me through things, I had a repertoire of things that I could make, depending on what I was in the mood for, and I could make them in sufficient quantities that they could serve as components for many different types of meals. The chicken went in lunches, but what accompanied the chicken changed throughout the week, so that I wouldn't get bored of it. And I still had the pizzas and microwave meals for variety and for those days where cooking just was not going to happen.

(Since the dishwasher in the apartment was broken, I also got very good at using the minimum number of pots and pans for these meals, because I dislike doing dishes by hand, and therefore would want to spend as little time on that as I could.)

Fast forward through the harmful relationship, and I am once again on my own and equipped with a kitchen to resume where I left off. Although by this time, C's dropped off the Internet, or at least LiveJournal, so I don't have the entries to refer back to again. What I do have, though, is the Internet itself, and so it's back to meal planning, figuring out what I want to make, and investing in a quality and sharp knife. Maki joined my repertoire of things I could make, and once again, the first one turned out beautifully, and many of the others turned out much less so. Presentation was not that important, however, because I was the one eating it, and therefore if it was delicious, it counted as a success. Shortly afterward, a long-distance relationship became a proximal one, and I returned to the more comfortable role of sous chef, doing prep work and assisting in cleanup while letting the person with confidence, skill, and practice do much of the main cooking work. My skills didn't atrophy, though, because these sessions had the same idea as C's in mind: I was learning things about how to gauge when something was done, I was handling preparation of various things, or at least the first stages of them, or being asked to watch them until they showed the signs of being done, and pretty often, I'd get the instructions on how something was done and the expectation that I would be able to turn out delicious food. And I succeeded in these matters, following recipe and instruction from someone who had the skills to look at a basket of things and figure out something delicious from them.

I'd still tell you no if you asked if I could cook, though. Even though there is one memorable instance in my cooking career where I may have shown up some people who did not have the necessary skills to prepare the food they had obtained for a gathering. Their chef had flaked on them, and so, because I was hungry and I knew how to make the food they wanted to serve, with one pan, a sharp knife, a silicone spatula, time, and spite, I made delicious food. There was definitely some incredulity that someone could just do something like that, but as someone who had trained with C's braised chicken and making C's quiche recipe, the food in question for the gathering was well within my capacity. And there were no complaints about the food that had been promised actually appearing, and being delicious.

(There is a story on my father's side of the family about one of the uncles taking over cooking and baking duties for my grandmother on that side as the cancer that eventually killed her (fuck cancer forever) made her no longer able to handle those duties. "I ain't heard no one complain," he said, when Grandma was trying to help him do things better. Being a person of sharp wit, she replied, "Are you still listening?")

As time has gone on, and other people have joined up with the household, cooking duties have been spread out and sometimes individualized, and sometimes not. I know that I've prepared the red beans and rice specialty from a housemate from recipe and direction, to excellent results, and I have been at last co-head chef for several years of the November feast and its requirements. This year, I flew solo on the November feast, and it was all delicious, and those who partook of the feast all agreed that it was delicious as well, so I suspect that means my cooking skills have significantly leveled up from what they were when I was just starting out with C, both for stunt chefery and feast chefery. I certainly have confidence at this point that I can follow recipe and turn out delicious things. (Chicken carbonara, oh, goodness, that was good, even if it was fiddly as fuck to get right.)

In the other half of chemistry class, most of what I'd learned how to do before University days were no-bakes and other items that required blending, but not necessarily baking and monitoring things until they were properly done, based on both the time that the recipe said and the eyeballing or toothpicking skills needed to ascertain when something is truly done and ready. The shutdown and shift to virtual services gave me a golden opportunity to practice skills that I had been self-conscious about (including art skills like drawing and crafting that I mentioned in the previous entry), and when I suggested to my co-presenters to try kitchen sciences with our child cohort, with the supervision of their adults, they were enthused about it. Which meant rustling up recipes for baked goods that could go from creation to full bake in approximately an hour, and then, live and in front of children and my co-presenter, actually doing the mixing, proving, rising, preparation, and baking for these objects. Shortbread first, then scones, pretzels, biscuits, pizzas, all different kinds of dough with different requirements of time, temperature, kneading, and the rest. I couldn't believe it when the shortbread came out of the oven and was delicious. I didn't believe I could do it well the first time. Some of the recipes I did a practice run with to make sure that they actually would go in the time that they claimed, and even the practice runs turned out well. As with the other things that I had made, I tried to emphasize to the children that if it was delicious, it was a success, no matter whether it looked perfect or not. Because the things I made were not uniform, perfectly-stamped objects all arranged in a row. They were different sizes, some a little looser or tighter than others, and showcased just how much of an amateur I was, and how much I was learning alongside them at doing this. But they were delicious, and the ones the kids made were delicious, as well.

I have had to learn how to adjust my spicing preferences to others' tastes, and to learn when to lean hard into spicing and when to have a lighter touch with it. But I am no longer intimidated by recipe, and the person I consider the cook in the household has been pointing out to me that I am already at the phase of making delicious food based on vaguer instructions than recipe, so I appear to be moving forward in skill and practice, so it's possible for me to make small diversions and adjustments to recipe based on the kitchen I'm in, and the taste of what I want. So, within a narrow band of possible parameters, and with instructions to hand, I can cook and bake, which is a lot more than I could do many years ago.