Cooking in the Afternoon

It is funny, if I look back on my life there are many roles I might have known I would be: for instance, I knew I would be a wife and a mother.  I do not know if that was a genetic predisposition or just too much prime TV, maybe I can blame Disney princess movies?  I just knew that to be happy I would want to be juggling a baby on one hip and writing a blog post with my other hand (or something like that).  On the other hand, I did not know that I would be a modern Betty Crocker.

Homemaking was not really something I put much thought into (much less cooking), parenting yes, homemaking, no.  Where the discontinuity happened, I do not know.  I blame the 1980s for exaggerating what the modern woman could/would be.  As a woman I am not liberated from the kitchen, instead I practically live in it. If I had a full time job then I am sure I would be in the kitchen for all my 'free time'.  Ha, free time.

As I write (again, one handed) I have muffins in the oven and onions sauteing on the stove top.  I will be making risotto from scratch for lunch, muffins from scratch for the kids lunches and snacks, and chicken soup more or less from scratch for dinner.  Thanks to the gluten free diet, eating out is out and so is making anything remotely processed.  Oy.  At least I have not started growing my own food, yet.  ;-)

I became a mom in my early twenties and I guess I assumed along with my progesterone and estrogen increases I would download the ability to cook yummy, nutritious meals for my family by the time my first daughter was born, as well as, the stamina to get that meal on the table every night.  However, once my first little baby started eating solids I found myself up a creek without a paddle.  I barely was keeping up with nightly meals that were edible, by the time my second daughter was born  I found myself calling my mom and my mother-in-law for cooking tips and recipes, watching the food network and reading magazines.  I still do. 

By the time my girls started school I was catching up.  I had dinners ready, they tasted good, I still needed help from my moms, but my husband was enjoying dinner at our house quite a bit.  I was good at mac n cheese, fried chicken, BBQ chicken, salmon and we has mastered our burrito nights.  Then Celiac Disease hit.  And I had to learn how to cook all over again.

The difference in learning to cook my second time around was everything had to be done creatively, everything had to be fresh, not only were the night out breaks over, but processed food on nights when I was exhausted were also out.  And yet here is when learning to cook became fun  Perhaps because I felt no pressure to know what I was doing.  Re-learning to cook on a gluten free diet I was allowed to stumble through recipes, fail and try again.

I never ever would have seen myself as a full time, short order cook, but I find myself in the kicthen night and day: making old recipes, trying new ones, tweaking and creating tasty treats.  I still pop out inedible dishes for old times sake, but the kitchen and I have learned to be friends and I actually find myself gravitating towards it when I am bored to make gluten free desserts.  To be fair... sometimes I am not sure it is the gluten free diet or the desserts that eventually aided my truce with the kitchen and I.  Doesn't matter much now though...