The Joy of Cooking

I come from a long line of cooks. Cousins, grandfathers, great-grandfathers…restaurant owners, caterers, neighborhood pierogi makers. I grew up in my grandpa’s kitchen, watching him make sausage and peppers, egg foo young, silver dollar pancakes. When I was finally tall enough to reach the kitchen counter, he started giving me jobs. Most often, it was Cheesecake Maker: He’d set out all the ingredients, cut out a recipe, and leave me to it. He’d be over the hot stove while I’d be crushing graham crackers into a crust. Those were our bonding moments.

I come from a long line of cooks. Cousins, grandfathers, great-grandfathers…restaurant owners, caterers, neighborhood pierogi makers. I grew up in my grandpa’s kitchen, watching him make sausage and peppers, egg foo young, silver dollar pancakes. When I was finally tall enough to reach the kitchen counter, he started giving me jobs. Most often, it was Cheesecake Maker: He’d set out all the ingredients, cut out a recipe, and leave me to it. He’d be over the hot stove while I’d be crushing graham crackers into a crust. Those were our bonding moments.

As an adult, I’ve expanded my repertoire through my travels. Whether it’s in a cooking class in Hanoi or through the memory of my tastebuds of a mole in Oaxaca, my kitchen cabinets today carry little mementos of my wanderings: The Sriracha hot sauce, the sheep’s cheese for bryndyzou pirohy, the curry powder and coconut milk. My cabinets trace where I’ve been.

Cooking is in my blood. There’s little else that I love to do as much as get lost in a recipe or a creation, digging through my rows and rows of spices or testing out a new ingredient I discovered at our local co-op. I am addicted to cookbooks and cooking magazines, to bulk spices and dry goods, to cast iron pots and silicon spatulas. I read the Williams-Sonoma catalogue as if it were a page-turning mystery. On Sundays, I map out elaborate menus for the week, organize my shopping lists, consult the cookbook du jour. I spend more money on groceries than I do on clothes, shoes, and toiletries combined.

I’m addicted.

So on a Friday night, when Ross might be out at the grad student happy hour or our other friends are drinking wine in someone’s apartment in the hopes of forgetting the week, I enjoy my own zen ritual. I bake, I cook, I experiment. Tonight: Cupcakes. Lemon cream cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting (dyed pink for Valentine’s Day, of course). Chocolate cupcakes with ginger-lime cream cheese frosting. Maybe a coconut poundcake for the extra frosting. And on Sunday, when I should frantically be reading the books for the week that I have yet to begin, instead I will be roasting Cornish hens with celery-pear stuffing. Or maybe teriyaki salmon and portobella caps. Or cauliflower casserole.

What can I say? Cooking is in my blood.