Don't be afraid of the food !

Here are some random musings about cooking and food that have kept my wheels turning...

Food can be frightening !  Not just the fear of not being able to prepare it well,  but if you have a severe food allergy it can damn well kill you.  I have been cursed with such an allergy to various tree nuts, and it definitely limits what foods I eat and makes me very cautious about dining out and new foods.   I know for sure that I am allergic to walnuts and Brazil nuts, and not allergic to almonds.  I don't know about the other tree nuts because I am too afraid to try them.  After you find it difficult to swallow because your throat is swelling, you are not too eager to try that category of food anymore.  My loss, definitely, as I will never really know what Nutella tastes like...

Sometimes I think about the "art" of cooking.  Is it an art?   I think that it can be, but isn't always.   Arguably, you can live without music or painting (though I would  not WANT to)  but you really can't live without food and drink.  So cooking is unavoidable and necessary, whether you enjoy doing it or not.  Most people can learn to cook,  they can make things edible, but the food may be unremarkable or unmemorable.  To me, if you eat to live you are a cook, if you live to eat, you have the makings of a chef !

Then there is the whole "right and wrong" argument about cooking.  I remember my grandmother telling my mother  that she was using the "wrong" pot to make some sort of dish.  The pot was not wrong because it was the incorrect shape or size, it was wrong because it was not the exact pot that my grandmother liked to use !  No wonder my mom was never an adventurous cook, she was always using the "wrong" pots !

Then there is the whole recipe thing.  Many of us learn to cook from recipes, and we get too dependent on them.  They are this crutch that we don't know how to throw away.  It can take a lifetime to figure out that  we need to learn techniques, not recipes.  I have been one of those recipe dependent cooks, and only in my old age am I starting to be comfortable with experimenting more and feeling more confident.

One last frightening thing about food, perhaps especially for the home cook, is pleasing everyone.  As the saying goes, you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family !  Unless you are blessed with a family that loves every kind of food and is not afraid to try new things, you have limits put  upon you.   Many of us are trying to cook for a small set of people who have radically different tastes and making a meal that is fine for all can be a daunting task!   No one in my family except me really likes fish, mushrooms, or lamb, so guess which foods I rarely cook with ?   My daughter and I love broccoli and my husband and son dislike it, and so it goes...

So yeah, food can be frightening.  If it is rich and decadent, it is bad for your figure and health.  You can't eat that, it tastes too good, you know it must be bad for you.  But, you CAN eat that, you just can't eat  tons of it and you shouldn't eat it every day.  It is all about balance  and variety, there are no right or wrong foods, you can eat just about everything in moderation.  Well, I guess except Nutella, for some of us....