Who knows who was it that coined the infamous Puerto Rican phrase… all I can say is few statements are as certain.
I admit using my kitchen skills to boost my ego. As frustrating as it may be at times, cooking is one of the very few stress relieving outlets that really works for me: It involves me doing a lot of work, so it takes my mind off whatever is going wrong in my life; and in the end I usually have something pretty and yummy to show for my effort.
Watching cooking shows and movies inspires me more than any self-help book and makes me want to rush and open a pastry shop… or something spontaneous like that. Until I actually find the guts to go after the ideal, sweet, self-employed career path, I thought I might share some of my culinary musings with the anonymous beings of the digital world.
I’m not big on following rules. I tend to bend them in my favor as much as possible, which is sometimes a good thing, though most frequently it just brings out a healthy dose of self loathing. But in the kitchen, I’m Mrs. Discipline. I appreciate anyone and anything that will make me stick to a schedule, a budget, a recipe… the kitchen does this for me. And it feels great to have a sense of structure at least for one thing in my life.
As for writing about cooking and food, well… it has become a way to delay gratification and better appreciate the whole cooking process. This is how one realizes all the work and thought that goes into it; the creative aspect of substituting ingredients to play with flavors, experimenting with textures, tweaking amounts to reach the final product you expected. It’s art and it’s science… it’s literary chemistry you can experience with all your senses.
Aaaand now I went too far and expressed deeper feelings for food than I have ever publicly acknowledged for my husband. Like the saying goes… love enters through the kitchen.
I’ll stop for now, but only to go into the kitchen. There’s a badge of fresh something that needs to get grilled, baked or fried!
-N
isla living 