![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[This Year's December Days Theme is Community, and all the forms that it takes. If you have some suggestions about what communities I'm part of (or that you think I'm part of) that would be worth a look, let me know in the comments.]
It's the last one for December Days, and it's been a good trip throughout the month. And I'm glad the randomizer left this one for the last, because this is a note to end on that's about accomplishment, confidence, and having to admit to myself that I might know what I'm doing in some of these situations.
Most of what I remember doing as a youngling involved putting things into the oven or the microwave to heat them up, or using specific appliances to achieve the goals that I wanted to do, like the hot air popcorn maker, or possibly helping out with the creation of some things like the turkeys around late November (on a base of a vanilla wafer, using chocolate frosting as glue, near one edge, apply two chocolate stars, point down and point up. On top of the top point of the chocolate star, apply one candy corn piece, point facing toward the front to create a beak. For the fan, apply a fudge stripe cookie, on edge, stripes facing forward, to the vanilla wafer base. If the end result looks like a turkey, you've done it correctly.) There was the occasional bit of learning to cook, like how to make the sauce for macaroni and cheese (which is apparently a roux, which I wouldn't learn until later) and possibly a few other things here and there, but I don't remember getting a lot of the basics and fundamentals of cooking before I left for university. At university, I did a fair amount of using the dormitory cafeterias for the first couple years, and then a fair amount of using prepackaged meals for the rest of my university career, with the occasional joining in on bigger projects or communal efforts, but mostly that was sous chef-ing for a portion of a bigger thing.
Once I got out on my own and had to make my own food, I knew that packaged food would be a sometimes thing, usually for taking to work, here and there, and so I would want to do as much as possible to have food that would suffice for multiple meals. If for no other reason because I actually had time to make food here and there, instead of having crammed weekends full of other activities.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
2dlife helped out a lot, with some recipes where I could make a lot of chicken at once, and then portion it out with other things over time, or making quiches for myself and being able to portion some of those out for lunches. (The first quiche I made was perfect and delicious. All the others I've made have been delicious, but imperfect. Soggy bottoms, mostly. Paul Hollywood would not approve.) Thanks to his lessons and patience with me, I learned braising, frying, and several other techniques that were new to me, as well as some of the science and reasons why things worked the way they did when you applied seasonings, heat, fats, and all the rest. It wasn't a complete culinary course, but it definitely helped me feel a lot more confident that I could cook, at least according to recipe.
Then we hit pause on my journey because my ex was the kind of person who wanted to cook and who had specifics about it and who felt like it was part of her contribution to the household to do the cooking. So I helped here and there, but for the most part, I was relegated to being the person who ate things rather than someone who cooked or baked, at least once we were living in the same space at the same time. Once I was on my own again, and then into the current situation that I have with housemates, I still am doing a lot of sous-chef assistance and trying to help out when other people want to cook, because being the person with the greatest ability level and spoon level means that sometimes if I want delicious food, I'm the one who has to put the pre-requisites together and sometimes start some of the things in motion so that the people who are making their own recipes can then take over at more critical junctures. It also helps that several of the people in the household have cooking experience and can walk me through the process or explain to me what a specific technique that's being referenced is. With the assistance of people wanting to try new recipes, or the realities of having to be the one who does work, I've leveled up by cooking skills significantly. Perhaps not enough to know what dish everything goes in at the first, or to be able to create something delicious merely from ingredients, but I'm also figuring out how to make my leftovers taste pretty good with a little oil and spice, so I suppose that's also technique at work.
Eventually, after the initial shutdown for the still-ongoing pandemic, when a lot of programming pivoted to virtual (although our organization mostly played that catch-as-catch-can rather than having some kind of thought or idea about how to approach it as an organization,) eventually I joined up with a STEM program being put on by another of our librarians, and from there, I decided to add on some kitchen science material, which meant putting my laptop in the kitchen and following simple baking recipes that could be finished and baked, or at least make it into the oven, within the one hour period that I had for the program time there. Which is where I learned a few things about baking as well as cooking, but also that if I followed the recipe that was in front of me, I could complete the task, and it was delicious. Many of the things I did weren't the greatest in terms of their look (Paul Hollywood might not have approved), but every single one of those baking projects that I did turned out delicious, and therefore, I declared them successful. And, because it was a program for small children, I was okay with showing them that things don't always end up looking perfectly when you put them together, even when you're a grownup and theoretically may have been doing this for a while. Which I wasn't. These things that I did, I did them for the first time, most of the time, or the second, after a test bake to make sure they did actually fit within the time period, and to ensure they didn't have any truly exotic or expensive ingredients associated with them. Various doughs are perfectly workable from the same general base, it just depends on what you do with them from there, and what kind of thing is being created. The chemistry on baking is a little more exacting than for cooking, but following the recipe, and making sure that I'd at least read all of the steps beforehand, helped result in delicious things.
I've helped some other people out on their cooking journeys, as well, passing along the lessons that I've learned so that someone else can create good food for themselves as well. And there's the occasional showing-off of food that happened, too, like when I was required to have first plate after doing a fair amount of the primary cooking work to create the November Feast. I've also demonstrated a certain amount of stunt cooking ability, when the perfect pan is in the dishwasher, or when the leftovers need to be eaten, when the person planning the feast needs an extra pair of hands in the kitchen to make sure things go according to plant, or when nothing seems like food, but I have to put something together anyway, or I'll go hungry. It's not creating masterpieces out of a basket of ingredients, but if it tastes good and it fuels the body, then I'm considering it a win.
I would have liked to have picked up this knowledge earlier on in life, looking back on it now, but I'm not sure that the person I was at the appropriate age would have been sufficiently interested in learning how to do cooking for any of it to stick. (Or, like so many other things that I tried not to learn in my childhood, it would have stuck perfectly in my head and resurfaced when there was a need for that knowledge many decades down the line.) Thankfully, there's no lost opportunity or other such things, and I can continue to keep collecting knowledge and practicing my skills even at my middle age without worry that I have somehow missed the boat on learning and mastering the skills that are relevant to the question. It's one of the skills that the youngest can learn as soon as they can see the pans and move them without hurting themselves or dropping everything in the interim. This society is not as much like the Roman one, which seems to have thought of eating out, or grabbing something from the corner store, as the regular way of doing things, rather than staying inside their own houses and cooking the food for eating. (Admittedly, it would be interesting to have a personal chef, only because that chef would probably spend an awful lot of time widening my palate and introducing me to food that I would never have considered for myself, much less eaten and enjoyed.) I'm also glad to have a person that's willing to teach, and that I get the opportunity to participate in the cooking and the baking, and to eat my own work, when I have put it into practice. Learned helplessness on this is not something that I want, nor to encourage in others.
And that's it! Another thirty-one subjects covered, loosely wrapped around a theme. I hope that it's been interesting reading, at least, even if the subjects haven't always been appealing or interesting to you. They'll start the Snowflake Challenge tomorrow, likely with the housekeeping challenge to make sure that everything is in order for the rest of the month. (And if you've enjoyed the Snowflake Challenge, they've been in need of people to help leave comments and develop later instances. I thought about joining up this year, and ultimately decided against it, because I wasn't sure what my schedule would have been like at the time, as well as trying to figure out what a different commitment of mine was going to require of me, but if it stays consistent, then perhaps next year I can be more involved in that item as well, or possibly see if we can get the sunshine variant back up and running around the June/July frame.
It's the last one for December Days, and it's been a good trip throughout the month. And I'm glad the randomizer left this one for the last, because this is a note to end on that's about accomplishment, confidence, and having to admit to myself that I might know what I'm doing in some of these situations.
Most of what I remember doing as a youngling involved putting things into the oven or the microwave to heat them up, or using specific appliances to achieve the goals that I wanted to do, like the hot air popcorn maker, or possibly helping out with the creation of some things like the turkeys around late November (on a base of a vanilla wafer, using chocolate frosting as glue, near one edge, apply two chocolate stars, point down and point up. On top of the top point of the chocolate star, apply one candy corn piece, point facing toward the front to create a beak. For the fan, apply a fudge stripe cookie, on edge, stripes facing forward, to the vanilla wafer base. If the end result looks like a turkey, you've done it correctly.) There was the occasional bit of learning to cook, like how to make the sauce for macaroni and cheese (which is apparently a roux, which I wouldn't learn until later) and possibly a few other things here and there, but I don't remember getting a lot of the basics and fundamentals of cooking before I left for university. At university, I did a fair amount of using the dormitory cafeterias for the first couple years, and then a fair amount of using prepackaged meals for the rest of my university career, with the occasional joining in on bigger projects or communal efforts, but mostly that was sous chef-ing for a portion of a bigger thing.
Once I got out on my own and had to make my own food, I knew that packaged food would be a sometimes thing, usually for taking to work, here and there, and so I would want to do as much as possible to have food that would suffice for multiple meals. If for no other reason because I actually had time to make food here and there, instead of having crammed weekends full of other activities.
2dlife helped out a lot, with some recipes where I could make a lot of chicken at once, and then portion it out with other things over time, or making quiches for myself and being able to portion some of those out for lunches. (The first quiche I made was perfect and delicious. All the others I've made have been delicious, but imperfect. Soggy bottoms, mostly. Paul Hollywood would not approve.) Thanks to his lessons and patience with me, I learned braising, frying, and several other techniques that were new to me, as well as some of the science and reasons why things worked the way they did when you applied seasonings, heat, fats, and all the rest. It wasn't a complete culinary course, but it definitely helped me feel a lot more confident that I could cook, at least according to recipe.Then we hit pause on my journey because my ex was the kind of person who wanted to cook and who had specifics about it and who felt like it was part of her contribution to the household to do the cooking. So I helped here and there, but for the most part, I was relegated to being the person who ate things rather than someone who cooked or baked, at least once we were living in the same space at the same time. Once I was on my own again, and then into the current situation that I have with housemates, I still am doing a lot of sous-chef assistance and trying to help out when other people want to cook, because being the person with the greatest ability level and spoon level means that sometimes if I want delicious food, I'm the one who has to put the pre-requisites together and sometimes start some of the things in motion so that the people who are making their own recipes can then take over at more critical junctures. It also helps that several of the people in the household have cooking experience and can walk me through the process or explain to me what a specific technique that's being referenced is. With the assistance of people wanting to try new recipes, or the realities of having to be the one who does work, I've leveled up by cooking skills significantly. Perhaps not enough to know what dish everything goes in at the first, or to be able to create something delicious merely from ingredients, but I'm also figuring out how to make my leftovers taste pretty good with a little oil and spice, so I suppose that's also technique at work.
Eventually, after the initial shutdown for the still-ongoing pandemic, when a lot of programming pivoted to virtual (although our organization mostly played that catch-as-catch-can rather than having some kind of thought or idea about how to approach it as an organization,) eventually I joined up with a STEM program being put on by another of our librarians, and from there, I decided to add on some kitchen science material, which meant putting my laptop in the kitchen and following simple baking recipes that could be finished and baked, or at least make it into the oven, within the one hour period that I had for the program time there. Which is where I learned a few things about baking as well as cooking, but also that if I followed the recipe that was in front of me, I could complete the task, and it was delicious. Many of the things I did weren't the greatest in terms of their look (Paul Hollywood might not have approved), but every single one of those baking projects that I did turned out delicious, and therefore, I declared them successful. And, because it was a program for small children, I was okay with showing them that things don't always end up looking perfectly when you put them together, even when you're a grownup and theoretically may have been doing this for a while. Which I wasn't. These things that I did, I did them for the first time, most of the time, or the second, after a test bake to make sure they did actually fit within the time period, and to ensure they didn't have any truly exotic or expensive ingredients associated with them. Various doughs are perfectly workable from the same general base, it just depends on what you do with them from there, and what kind of thing is being created. The chemistry on baking is a little more exacting than for cooking, but following the recipe, and making sure that I'd at least read all of the steps beforehand, helped result in delicious things.
I've helped some other people out on their cooking journeys, as well, passing along the lessons that I've learned so that someone else can create good food for themselves as well. And there's the occasional showing-off of food that happened, too, like when I was required to have first plate after doing a fair amount of the primary cooking work to create the November Feast. I've also demonstrated a certain amount of stunt cooking ability, when the perfect pan is in the dishwasher, or when the leftovers need to be eaten, when the person planning the feast needs an extra pair of hands in the kitchen to make sure things go according to plant, or when nothing seems like food, but I have to put something together anyway, or I'll go hungry. It's not creating masterpieces out of a basket of ingredients, but if it tastes good and it fuels the body, then I'm considering it a win.
I would have liked to have picked up this knowledge earlier on in life, looking back on it now, but I'm not sure that the person I was at the appropriate age would have been sufficiently interested in learning how to do cooking for any of it to stick. (Or, like so many other things that I tried not to learn in my childhood, it would have stuck perfectly in my head and resurfaced when there was a need for that knowledge many decades down the line.) Thankfully, there's no lost opportunity or other such things, and I can continue to keep collecting knowledge and practicing my skills even at my middle age without worry that I have somehow missed the boat on learning and mastering the skills that are relevant to the question. It's one of the skills that the youngest can learn as soon as they can see the pans and move them without hurting themselves or dropping everything in the interim. This society is not as much like the Roman one, which seems to have thought of eating out, or grabbing something from the corner store, as the regular way of doing things, rather than staying inside their own houses and cooking the food for eating. (Admittedly, it would be interesting to have a personal chef, only because that chef would probably spend an awful lot of time widening my palate and introducing me to food that I would never have considered for myself, much less eaten and enjoyed.) I'm also glad to have a person that's willing to teach, and that I get the opportunity to participate in the cooking and the baking, and to eat my own work, when I have put it into practice. Learned helplessness on this is not something that I want, nor to encourage in others.
And that's it! Another thirty-one subjects covered, loosely wrapped around a theme. I hope that it's been interesting reading, at least, even if the subjects haven't always been appealing or interesting to you. They'll start the Snowflake Challenge tomorrow, likely with the housekeeping challenge to make sure that everything is in order for the rest of the month. (And if you've enjoyed the Snowflake Challenge, they've been in need of people to help leave comments and develop later instances. I thought about joining up this year, and ultimately decided against it, because I wasn't sure what my schedule would have been like at the time, as well as trying to figure out what a different commitment of mine was going to require of me, but if it stays consistent, then perhaps next year I can be more involved in that item as well, or possibly see if we can get the sunshine variant back up and running around the June/July frame.
