Cooking? Meh.

I've recently come to a pretty big realization, one that took a long time for me to admit to myself.  I've tried to fight it for a long time, because I've felt like the opposite should be true.  But it isn't.  And it's time that I be true to myself.

::Deep breath::

It turns out that I just really don't like cooking.  A lot of my friends enjoy cooking as a hobby.  I mean, a lot of them.  You'd think that through the many years of dinner parties, where we all get together and spend the evening cooking a big, adventurous, elaborate meal, that I would have picked up the Joy of Cooking through osmosis.

Unfortunately, though, it seems that it's not that easy.  It's not that I'm unwilling to cook.  I understand on an intellectual level that I must know how to apply heat to food in order to sustain my body.  But I simply don't enjoy the process of doing so.

You have to get all the food out of the refrigerator.  Boring.  You have to get the cutting board and knife out of the cabinet.  Boring.  You have to wash the veggies.  Boring.  Then you have to actually cut the veggies.  Super boring.

By the time I've accomplished my part of the process, Scott's already nearly finished with his.  He's much faster than I am.  It doesn't seem to matter which part of cooking I do, Scott is always faster at his part.  By the time I'm finished chopping up the stupid vegetables, I'm already so frustrated with the whole process that if it were up to me, we would just eat nuts for dinner.

Next comes the negotiation with Scott.  "If you sautee these vegetables for me, I'll clean the kitchen myself."  We both know it's a farce.  We will both clean the kitchen together after we eat and watch an episode of Eureka on Netflix.  But really, I can't stand to put the stupid veggies in the stupid pan which I will inevitably make too hot and then the dumb things will burn.  So Scott, forced into a corner of either cooking the veggies himself or not having veggies at all, cooks the veggies.


Like I said, for a while, I felt bad about this horrible secret.  But then I realized that it's ok.  Lots of people have to do things every day that they don't like.  And I understand that just because I don't like cooking doesn't exempt me from doing it.  At least, part of it.  I do, after all, manage to successfully chop up those veggies.  Sometimes I do even apply heat to them, much as I dislike it.  But I really can't see having cooking be a hobby.  To me, it's thinly-veiled work.

So the next time we have a dinner party, don't be surprised if I'm not jumping for joy at the prospect of chopping up those onions.  Cooking just isn't my thing.