I Hate Cooking. Still.

Cooking is just part of life when one is a stay-at-home mom.  I hate to cook.  My husband loves to cook, but he works very long days, so I'm stuck with the task Monday through Friday.  As I've said many times, I only cook so the family doesn't die.  I CAN cook, but it's a lot of work that results in a huge mess that makes another big batch of work to clean up.   I try to channel his spirit during the week, a task at which I fail daily.

I recall enjoying a wonderful meal at a family member's home that he seemed to enjoy making.  I asked him for the recipe which, it turns out, was a Tyler Florence masterpiece.  It was chicken enchiladas.  My mom made enchiladas.  How hard could it be?  According to Tyler Florence, it should have taken about an hour to make.  That, of course, appears to be the case if you live on Jupiter and have a kitchen full of sous chefs.  Here on Earth, it took quite a bit longer.  After almost two hours I was a mess, the kitchen was a mess, and the meal was just OK.    I figured cookbooks from Barnes & Noble were directed to the home cook, not students or graduates of Le Cordon Bleu. The cookbooks should have a sticker like those parental warning lables on CDs for bad language.  These should have a liar alert label with respect to the time issue and complexity of the prep.  If I have to Google an ingredient, it should have a warning label.  If it requires ingredients I can only get by ordering online from Zimbabwe, it should have a warning label.  If freakin' Martha Stewart can't do it in the predicted and declared-as-fact time frame, it should come with a bottle of wine to soothe the savage home cook.  Harrumph.

This is all prompted by my husband calling to announce his departure from his office and ask if I'm making anything fabulous for dinner tonight.  Is he kidding?  It's never fabulous.  Sometimes it's very good (Italian is my specialty, but that doesn't fly when one is on Weight Watchers and getting beaten up for snarking carbs).  I'd say it's time for a very generous glass of wine, after which I won't mind cooking so much and certainly won't mind if they don't love it.   Give him a glass of wine and he'll find the meal fabulous.

It was just a thought.