“Everyone can cook” – Chef Auguste Gusteau
Okay, from the top. In the beginning, God created Man and Woman. Woman decided to make a nice light snack one day and things rapidly went downhill from there. See guys? WE were meant to be the ones in the kitchen!
What’s that? Not THAT far back? Okay, I can handle that. Hi. My name is Grant. I’m a 40 year old Capricorn and over the past few years, and now very recently, I’ve rediscovered that I like to make stuff in the kitchen. One might say I occasionally “chef about”. I wouldn’t. That’s a horrible turn of phrase, and by no means am I an expert as you can see from the attached photo of my most recent attempt to make Kraft Dinner (point of order – remember to remove the cheese package BEFORE dumping the noodles in the pot of boiling water….), but I very much do enjoy eating…I mean cooking…and THEN eating. When you get right down to it it’s all one in the same, isn’t it?
A few years ago I was working in a pretty time and brain intensive career, but I determined it was high time to get back in the kitchen and exercise a different portion of my noggin and call ‘dibs’ on kitchen duty. A few things led to this decision…
- I like to eat. (Have I mentioned that already? I did? Good. That’s important).
- With 3 kids and a couple of them rather picky, my stay-at-home-wife had narrowed the menu rotation down to the tried-and-true favourites and it was a decidedly short list. I absolutely LOVE each and every one of the options, don’t get me wrong, they’re family staples for a reason, but when the leftovers you take to work for lunch wind up being a preview of that night’s dinner? Sometimes you need to spice it up.
- I discovered The Great British Bake-Off. The single greatest show ever devised. “The Tent” just seemed like such a fantastic and creative place to be, where average joe’s and jill’s whipped up some magic. One day I hope to get over to England and you’ll find me creeping around the lawns of various Castles trying to find where they film the show.
So, with my Wife being home and handling the shopping and meals, and my work schedule really tying my hands on the weekdays, I resolved to pick up some measuring spoons and the weekend’s became…
DAD’S TURN TO COOK!
(See what I did there?)
Again, I’m not a chef, but I like to play around. I can google recipes like a champ and I sometimes even follow them! (I can hear my Wife chuckling at that from here…) For the most part, I view recipes as inspiration. I tweak them a bit, I substitute ingredients if need be due to what I could find in the pantry (remember, my Wife handled all the shopping…) and sometimes I just picked up something that was on-sale to build a dish around while picking up a jug of milk at the grocery store on the way home. You won’t find anything too fancy here. We’re a pretty basic Canadian family that’s been on a single income and therefore budgets and spends accordingly. There will be a splurge meal every once in a while, but we shop for sales, we grab store brands (unless any brand name labels are feeling sponsory….?), and when proteins are on sale we LOAD UP the deep freeze.
-g
Dad's Turn To Cook 