8:49 p.m. - 14 April 2001
Numbers, houses, and food
Yesterday was Friday the 13th. I meant to write an entry then, but I was out house-hunting all day, and then by the time we got home I was congested and unhappy and decided to wait. Besides, that's what I'm best at.
Anyway. I am not triskadekaphobic, by any stretch of the imagination. Thirteen is, and always has been, my favorite number. That might have just a little to do with the fact that my birthday is on a 13th; July 13th, to be exact. I always joke that my birthday is easy to remember numerically, since it's the luckiest number and the unluckiest number: 7/13. This year, my birthday is on a Friday, for only the fourth time in my life. [Though my mathematically inclined sister would note that since I turn 25 this year, it would be odd if it was on Friday any more or less than that. Pah, I say.]
There's actually an interesting coincidence regarding my birthday: the last three major moves my parents have made have all been in years my birthday was on a Friday the 13th. My mother is really hoping that this is the year that the cycle is broken. Besides, I have moved enough times in the past few years to completely reroute the coincidence. Although a case could be made that this move, into our own house sometime this year, would follow the pattern of a major move.
I'm quite sure you're all very tired of reading about our house hunting. I am quite tired of it myself. But it does seem to be the major theme in my life right now. I've looked at floor plans; I've talked to modular home dealers; I've spent hours in the back seat of a real estate agent's car. What have we decided?
We haven't.
But since our current lease doesn't end until November, it's not like we have to move out tomorrow or anything. Besides, Lee and I both have a six-month provisional time period. His will be over in May; mine in June. We won't be doing anything until then.
I found out recently that there is a Johnson and Wales within a reasonable driving distance of where we are now. This is very tempting. I've been bandying the idea of going to culinary school about for a while, and having one nearby was part of the sticking point: there wasn't one.
I have been at home in the kitchen for a very long time. I cooked with some supervision when I was 6 or so, and without supervision not terribly long after that. For many years, I stuck mostly to baked goods: cakes, cookies, brownies, etc. Pie crust and I are still working out our difficulties, and light, fluffy biscuits still elude me.
It's only been the last couple of years that I've felt more comfortable cooking other sorts of food; unless I had a recipe, that is. I still follow recipes fairly exactly at first and then start to play around with them. Improvisation happens a little less frequently, although I'm getting better at that, as well. My chicken parmesean went through a couple of iterations before I found one that I really liked (my secret? Double bread the chicken breasts. It makes all the difference).
Lee credits Alton Brown and Good Eats with a lot of the transformation from "recipes only" to "playing with food." I'm a little hesitant to give all the kudos to that particular cooking show since I've been watching them for years. Saturday afternoons were once spent with PBS and whomever was cooking there; I've since moved on to the Food Network. I've been reading cookbooks straight through as if they were novels since elementary school, so at least some of that knowledge had to sink in one way or another. I think now I feel free enough in the kitchen to try things and not worry about whether they'll work or not. Lee will eat virtually anything, even if I won't, so I always have a guinea pig.
The hardest things to cook? Dishes my mom made. I have copies of many of our family recipes, but there are just as many that have never been written down. SOS, for example (SOS usually stood for same old slop when my sisters and I were younger. It wasn't until a few years ago we learned it was originally shit on a shingle), which is basically ground beef (or venison, which was more likely the case for a long time) in a white sauce over toast. I have yet to be able to even come close to Mom's. But on the other hand, if I was able to duplicate her dishes, they wouldn't be as special when we go home.
