Sometimes you have to put love on the back burner

I grew up in a family of big eaters … and paid the price for it twice in my life. I’ll just say the scale was seriously tipped in my direction. Somehow, though, I managed to maintain my title as the thinnest, adult La Pelusa in the family, mainly because somewhere between 18 and 35, I grew tired of food. Given the Sun Day’s readership, this is probably the most shocking news of all: Man doesn’t like food.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I like food. I love certain food. What I don’t like about food is that you have to cook it. I’m not saying I want to go back to my farthest ancestors, hunt game on my hands and knees with animal skins on my back, and tear open a bunny with my enlarged incisors, but I wish eating didn’t require such preparation. Chopping, rubbing, spicing, stirring, flipping, turning, checking, pleading, hoping, fighting, anticipating. It’s like being married. It’s exhausting sometimes. I enjoy cooking mainly on a survival level.

Like a relationship, it takes a lot to keep things fresh and interesting. Approximately three meals a day times 365 days a year adds up to about 1,095 cooking sessions. Maybe I should add “hunt food” to the mix. How many things do you do 1,095 times per year? Blink? Creativity runs a little short around meal 500. And the idea of “re-spicing” a staple dinner to add a little spunk to the evening is just plain scary, with long debate leading up to me standing over a sizzling frying pan, spice bottle tipped and paused on the precipice of culinary change.

“Honey, did you do something different to the pasta tonight?”

“I did. I added cumin. Over the top, I know.”

“No, it’s [long pause] good.”

Scratch that from the recipe book.

So far as I can tell, the only way to get some real spice in your life is to get your hands dirty. I think that goes for anything but especially cooking. Every family has a menu of truly outstanding dishes. And, again, like a relationship, they’ve taken years to hone. And whether these dishes have been passed down for generations or you came up with them and have only been cooking them throughout your life, one thing is for certain: good food takes toil and time and trial and error. And love. And a dash of daring.

Again, cooking is like being married.

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