...has been a long, slow process.
But in the past year, thanks to friends, magazines, and the Internet, I have been gradually expanding my repertoire.
Possibly my proudest moment so far was roasting my first turkey, as part of an emergency “distributed cooking” effort. A local charity traditionally serves a Thanksgiving meal to several hundred people in our community who might not otherwise be able to partake of the holiday feasting. But last October, a week before Canadian Thanksgiving, the charity’s kitchen burned down. Multiple turkeys had been donated, but there was no way to prepare them. So the call went out to 20 or 30 volunteers: could each of us take one turkey, cook it in our home oven, and schlep the ready-to-serve bird over to the school gym where the dinner was taking place?
Well, hey, what I won’t do for myself, I’ll jump to do for others who are in need. I’d already gotten a couple of roasted chickens under my belt, thanks to the patient coaching of several friends. So I figured I could handle it. Downloaded a recipe from the Web, and before I knew it, I’d accomplished something that used to seem like such a mystery – a kind of magic that certain people (my mama, my aunt, my ex-husband) could do almost effortlessly, but that just didn’t seem to be a strength of mine.
Having taken a long hiatus from acquiring new cooking skills over the winter, spring, and summer (when I allowed myself to dine out and order in way more than was strictly necessary), I now feel ready for my, er, next “course” of study. So, soup’s on … my 43T list now.
