Aug 19, 2020 3 min read

Are you sick of your own cooking yet?

I sure am.

Then again, I was sick of my own cooking long before the COVID-19 pandemic put us all in lockdown and closed down our favorite restaurants. I love food and I love to eat, but I absolutely hate to cook. Always have. Always will.

Part of this probably stems from being single for decades and only cooking for one.

On one hand, you don’t have to please anyone but yourself. On the other hand, you always have leftovers so you don’t have to cook that often and no one complains about your cooking. I always eat what I cook and can’t say it ever tastes bad – at least to me.

I don’t think I’ve ever burned anything but I’m not a great cook. My boyfriend says I know how to cook but just hate doing it. That makes me feel better that either he’s being extremely nice or I really haven’t ever made anything that he thought tasted that horrible.

Then again, I don’t really cook for him that much.

He loves to cook but he doesn’t really cook that often for me either. Maybe both of us are just too tired after working all day. I can’t think of anything worse than having to cook dinner after you come home from work … except maybe having to clean the house after work.

I cook because I have to eat, but absolutely view it as a chore.

For someone who really doesn’t get the joy of cooking, I sure do love watching cooking shows. I’ll watch the “Top Chef” competitions and marvel at all of the exotic ingredients they use like sunchokes, white truffles and all sorts of seafood and meat cuts that I have never seen or tasted. You would think after watching so many cooking shows I would be a much better chef. I have picked up a few tips over the years like when I saw Curtis Stone throw some fresh baby spinach into a frying pan and voila! I thought it looked pretty easy and it was. Now, I saute baby spinach in all of my omelettes and even tried one of those white wine and lemon juice sauces for my chicken the other night where you deglaze the pan.

I’m not quite sure I did it exactly how Emeril Lagasse would have, but it tasted OK and I didn’t scorch it. It was much better than plain old chicken.

I am getting more adventurous in the kitchen, but if a TV chef has more than five ingredients, I’m out. Once they’re onto step seven using spices and stuff I don’t have and am not going to buy just for one recipe, I’ve lost interest. Watching cooking shows hasn’t made me a better cook, but it does make me hungry.

Maybe I’ll make my favorite thing for dinner: reservations.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.