Cooking Thearpy

I don't have much of a record as a cook. In fact, in previous years I have gone out of my way to avoid cooking. Frozen pizzas, Pasta Roni, Mac and Cheese, you name the processed food, and I ate it.

A couple weeks ago I was desperate as the stores had closed at their usual 7pm and I got home at 7:30p. We had nothing much to eat in our apartment. But I found some old packets of good ole US chicken noodle soups. I made it, thanking the US for its practical food. It was so easy, all I had to do was dump the packet of dried soup into boiling water. It even detailed how you could save time by microwaving it instead. But I made it the traditional way on the stove praising my patience in the act.

It was done in 5 minutes. And then I couldn't eat it. It tasted horrible. What happened? It's not like I could have mistaken how to make it as the directions were in English. Not to mention I used live on this stuff.

What happened was that while I became a foreigner, my American food slowly did too.

After living in Switzerland where pre-prepared, frozen, and boxed food is as prevalent as, say, a sunny day in Zurich (fact: Zurich gets more rain than London) I have been forced, along with all the other Swiss housewives to make peace with raw, unprepared food.

At first, we really didn't get along. I burned many things in my centigrade temperature oven. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how many grams made up a pound. Or how many liters a cup was. I went to the store and wanted to cry because there was every cheese on earth except chedder. Or I'd get home and realize the steak I bought was pork, not real steak.

But like my German, I improve a little in my cooking every day. Today, for example, I had to work on a really boring project for work. But luckily I could work from home. So inbetween the paragraphs I cooked.

I cooked French Onion soup and my husband came home for lunch to eat it. I cooked banana bread from scratch. And then for dinner I baked oven-roasted vegetables in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and fresh basil. There was no cutting corners. No buying already minced garlic (doesn't exist) for example.

I have been so upset at work lately, that I have used cooking to calm me, to get me praise that I'm not getting elsewhere in my life. It's easy now, as my husband is used to having a wife that never cooks, so anything I make he is amazed.

Going to 3 grocery stores for ingredients for one meal no longer phases me. I have made peace with cooking. And I'm going into the kitchen now to throw out the remaing pre-made soup packets. And then I'm unloading the dishwasher for the second time today. Cooking, you see, makes lots of dirty dishes.