Food.

     Today the kitchen has been a busy place at Whimzy & Earl's.  Actually, the kitchen is usually a busy place in our house.  It's probably the biggest room with the most seating, and unlike the EOS studio, which is otherwise a great place to hang out with it's HUGE TV and HUGER VHS collection, it's always warm.  We frequently have our neighbours over (let's call them Havoc and Maman - I don't know how they'd feel about being publicly outed as our friends!) and rarely move from the kitchen.  I like the coziness of a kitchen, with its close proximity to tea and snacks and cans of soda, (I have a minor ginger ale addiction, but I'm working on it.  No I'm not.) and the kitties seem to enjoy the kitchen as well.  Turkey loves to sleep on top of the microwave and Monkey prowls the counters and floor in search of delicious tidbits.  Today I caught him licking up flour.  Weirdo.


     Anyway, today the kitchen has been extra-busy because we've been making delicious food.  Earl whipped up a crockpot stew this morning (with fresh steak beef cubes from King Street Market, our local butcher, and a half bottle of red wine I got for Christmas - neither of us drink alcohol, so it was nice to find a use for the wine!).  The stew has been smelling delicious since about 11am.  And I got inspired to make peanut butter cookies this afternoon.  Earl loves peanut butter, especially Jif which he gets from his sister every time she goes to the States, and he was kind enough to let me use some for cookies.  
     I know making cookies is no big thing, but I never cook.  Never.  When Earl met me he laughed at me because I did most of my grocery shopping at a gas station near my house.  They sold soup and frozen pizzas and TV dinners - what more does a girl need?  Actually, my favourite single-girl supper was cheese (at least two kinds, preferably parmesan and an old cheddar), crackers, some form of fruit (grapes, pears or apples are the best), and maybe some spicy salami.  Food groups covered!
     Now that I have an Earl, my kitchen role is reduced to hanger-outer, and possibly sous-chef on a special occasion.  I also make salads (and by 'make', I mean open the bags of ready-made salads) and pizza.  But today I wanted cookies and we didn't have any so it got me thinking about how easy cookies are to make, and how much better they are home-made.  I had to head out into the Arctic weather to buy some brown sugar (ours had solidified into something that might be construed as a weapon), Crisco (what IS shortening anyway?  Actually, wait, I'm pretty sure I have an idea and don't need to know for sure) and chocolate chips.  Earl wasn't keen on the latter, so I opted to make a 1/2 batch with them and a 1/2 batch plain.
     Then I had to do the dishes.  Although our kitchen is huge, our counter space is limited and I wanted to start with a clean deck.  Earl decided to take a nap while all of this mayhem was going on.  I think he thought I might hurt myself and didn't want to be a witness.  By the time he woke up, the cookies were just going in the oven.  After waiting the requisite cooking time (8-9 minutes - a duration I remember as an eternity when I used to bake cookies with my Nanny as a child), the cookies came out and they were PERFECT if I do say so!  Delicious, melt-in-your-mouth, I-need-another-one goodness.  I managed to resist eating more than two (one plain, one chocolate chip) so I have lots of room for YUMMY STEW!


     Food is an interesting topic.  People generally have very strong opinions about it.  I mean, even aside from weight and health implications.  (People who talk too much about those things are even more boring than people who talk too much about sports I care nothing about).  When I was a kid, I ate very little.  My list of 'likes' included grilled cheese, pizza (with the most basic toppings), some pastas (with red sauce only), chicken fingers, fruit, tuna from a can (because I didn't know it was fish), and "cheese dreams" - a piece of white bread under the broiler with a cheese slice and a hot dog cut into pieces making a happy face. My 'dislikes' included everything else. I'm no foodie these days, but I've managed to expand my eating repertoire considerably.  For example, I now eat most meats, and many vegetables (including green beans which were the bane of my existance as a child - my Mom would literally chase me around the house with a bean on a fork asking me to 'just try it').  
     This summer when we moved to Ptbo Earl and I discovered the Farmer's Market and that has gone a long way to getting me to try new veggies, beans and beets among them.  At Thanksgiving this year I shovelled in a forkful of green beans and opened my mouth proudly for my Mom to show her I did more than "try" them - I actually love them now!  And beets - I had never had beets before, but find them delicious and think they taste like corn.  I asked my Mom why she hadn't tried to feed me beets as a child, and she responded that SHE hated beets so never made them.  Interesting.  It's probably for the best that I don't have children, as they'd be dietarily deprived unless Earl did the grocery shopping.
     The one thing I haven't been able to come around to is fish and seafood.  DO NOT LIKE.  In any form.  (Except for ol' tuna in the can!)  Actually, once when I was in the British Virgin Islands with my family we ate at a beach shack that only offered fish, and I discovered when covered with Carribbean spices, a mild fish isn't too bad.  But sadly, fish is Earl's favourite, and he doesn't get to eat it enough, so I might keep trying on that one.
     Anyway, all of this talk about food is making my tumbly a bit rumbly.  Maybe one more cookie before dinner?