Cooking?

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I must admit, I do watch cooking shows.  Actually, from time to time, I would cook a truly marvelous meal.  Actually, I cooked supper five nights a week, more if I was feeling up to it.  She was required to do the dishes, if I would help from time to time.  And both of us did the shopping.  I couldn't trust her to buy the correct brands, so some of the things that lasted longer I could buy, and veggies once in a while so as not to get organics.  Don't trust them.

Cooking is easy.  The most intricate of items simply require paying attention.  The real trick is getting several different dishes, cooked at different speeds and temps, to all be done at the right time and get those served while still hot.  With enough of the variables tended, I could easily still cook more often.

Of course, some things are simply beyond my budget.  Duck confit, for example.  It is simple enough.  But duck fat, rendered, costs about a dollar an ounce.  Imagine 32 ounces of the stuff, which is about what you need to make the dish.  I suppose you could strain it, and reuse it, for a while.  But duck itself is expensive.  My guess is, this dish was cooked by peasants, once in a great while, when enough duck lard had been rendered from other cooking, and as... a poor man's delight.  Actually, most of the French style cooking was more akin to what people who starve do to enjoy their food more.  Very small servings, but many of them.  Just a theory, mind you...  From a guy who often starves when left to his own devices.

Oh... just thinking of food.  Thanksgiving dinner reminds me of how hungry I can get.  I've had odd foods, lately, off and on.  What I can make, I do.  But... I'm slowly running out of things, having been mucking around with medicine for so long.  Remind me to never fall off it again.  Though... we know it will happen.  Actually, my father, the one I claim, had heart problems.  My mother, in that family, jumped through hoops to keep him on his medication.  I never quite understood the... horror she would go through when she realized he had missed a dose, and the efforts she sometimes went through to give him his medicine.  Calling a friend, to get a ride, to go a hundred miles even once, plus having to figure out how to get someone to watch over me, or did she trust me?  It was an iffy thing, for her, that last... plus there were obligations, since I was a foster child.  Anyway, now I understand.  And I know, now, how hard it was for my father to continue to take them.

I really need to figure things out.  The problem is, is that I can't just figure them out.  Every day, for the rest of my life, I am simply going to have to fight to just stay above ground.  It seems to take a lot more than what I have seen to kill me, so I don't have much choice.  I'm almost stuck in life.  No complaints, finally, once I realized how things worked and started going in the right direction.  I suppose, like a fish in a flood.  Just face upstream even if you lose ground more than you take ground.  It might seem like you are dead but... not yet.  Oh, and watch for boulders, tree trunks, and perhaps even Doom.  I always wondered if I ran over any poor fish, just trying to survive, in my white-water event.  :)

Duck confit for dinner.  Fresh, hand caught, trout sushima for lunch, while I'm at it.  I can dream.