We recently returned from a mini family vacation to France. And yes it was a long list of the lovely things you are probably thinking, including the food.
Oh, the food.
France is bursting with great food. Cheeses and breads and wines and it often seems like a pastry shop on every corner, and could we have tried it all in our short visit we just might have.
It did get me thinking about cooking, of course. We cook at home a lot—a creative outlet of its own sort, yes—and we do that not only because it is the more economical and healthy choice, but because we love to do it. Too, it’s a family tradition, of sorts.
All that said, I started my home cooking career late. I moved away from home having learned how to fry an egg and heat some pasta sauce from a jar, and maybe grill up a cheese sandwich if I was brave. But realistically, at twenty, I was very much a beginner.
Beginners in the fine art of cooking can find themselves with many outcomes, but if one wants to eat on a student’s budget the one outcome that cannot afford to manifest is surrender: you just gotta keep trying.
My wife uses it as a punchline now, but one of my early beginner experiments in cooking as a broke student was a dish I affectionately called Curry Surprise—a mix of ground beef, pasta, cheddar cheese, curry paste and a few other add-ins—that was a weekly staple in my campus housing kitchen. It was pretty terrible. But it was better than another bowl of macaroni and cheese from a box.
These days we cook elaborate pasta dishes, grill amazing sandwiches made from homemade sourdough, and dine on a long list of honed and practiced recipes.
But once, long ago, we were beginners and we played with terrible ideas that literally nourished us and taught us how to break away from instant meals and ever more deeply enjoy amazing foods at home or abroad.
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