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Mom tries to cook

 

I have always been a lousy cook. Disinterested and disdainful of rich sauces that seduce the taste buds, nudge the scales, and heat up the health risk.

I've tried cooking lean, but my kids won't touch it. Served vegetarian, and they picked out the peas, carrots, even the parsley flakes. Last year, I filled the freezer with Costco entrees and microwaved a meal for each.

This year, when Peter left for college, there was one less specialized eater at home. Little Anna is happy with rice every night, so that leaves Katy, who won't eat rice, or meat, vegetables, dairy, and anything else that's served.

"I'll eat pasta," she announced one night. "If you cook a bunch of different kinds."

So I took up the challenge.

Not just because of Katy. I had some free time. I'd just finished a novel and was waiting to hear from a literary agent -- the critical link between me and a publishing contract. My hands had little to do, and they're the kind that need to be busy. On top of that, there was practically nothing I could prepare well enough to pass the pot luck test. So I figured it was time to learn to cook. Pasta anyway.

Instead of buying frozen pizzas at Costco, I bought The Italian Cooking Encyclopedia. Color pictures on every page and more engaging than my book club novel, I read it cover to cover. Next, I roamed three markets for linguine, fusilli, rigatoni, Arborio rice, polenta, fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, extra virgin olive oil, and more.

Within a week, I had created pastas with pesto, and six other sauces. Everybody, including Katy, gobbled them up and urged me to move on. So I made fresh pizza, calzone, cheese risotto, frittata, and everything my daughter marked in the cookbook with yellow stickies.

John and I love Indian food, so that was my next journey. To the market for basmati rice, yogurt, and a dozen new spices, followed by thicker smells in the kitchen and stronger tastes on the table. Chicken masala, jeera rice, spinach bharta.

Peter arrived home for a weekend, and after dinner remarked, "Why didn't you do this before I left for college, Mom?"

"No time then, Sweety." But now, I wished there was less free time. I still hadn't heard from any agent.

The Complete Encyclopedia of Vegetables and Vegetarian Cooking came home with me on my last trip to Costco. For two months, I hadn't cooked the same thing twice, and this book took me along yet another culinary trail. Now, it feels more like a race track, the way I'm tearing though recipes and bumping the corners of my kitchen.

Time to slow down and mellow with the juices of my tomato quiche, and penne with mushroom sauce. The family relishes what I cook, but it seems no agent finds what I've made for them so tasty. My first novel is pushed aside, like the mediocre meals of my past.

But I write far better than I cook. Or so I thought. I've studied the recipes for writers already, published two non-fiction books, and so many articles. But the novel is received with less enthusiasm than my soggy noodles.

Now what? Mexican food? Chinese? Maybe a part-time job will keep me from mourning the buried manuscript. But when I balance low wages with daycare and high mother absenteeism, I figure it's time to chill.

Deal with the failure. That's what I tell my kids so often ... it's okay to fail. Everybody does, sometimes. Learn to accept it, grow from it, and move on. My own advice coming back and tapping me on the shoulder. Punching me in the face. Now tickling, and laughing at me, while I remember that one failed book is only one bruised potato, and I'd better toss it out before it spoils my cooking.

Curried eggplant tonight. My family hates it, but this treat is for me. Tomorrow I'll cook again for them. Tomorrow, I'll write something spicy, the beginning of a new novel that's so delicious no agent can possibly resist.

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