Don't And Won't: It's A Cooking Confessional At The Dept.(There Go My Pescetarian Readers)

Today's question deals with one of my favourite pastimes, cooking.  I love to cook, and I am a very intuitive cook, probably like so many of you.  Recipe requests are usually met with a sort of stunned expression;  most of the time, there simply isn't one, or if there is, I've long forgotten it and use no formal measurements anymore.  Just as often, what the person has just eaten is something I made up on the spot, based solely upon what I had on hand, what was fresh and lovely at the market or farmstand, or what I managed to salvage from what I thought it was going to be when I started out until things took a decidedly different turn for whatever reason.

Anyway, here we go:

Is there anything you don't or won't cook?

The short answer is yes and yes, but you know me:  I have to explain and qualify that answer.  Let's start with the Don't part.

Now that Jared and Sam are out on their own, I have to admit that I don't cook a Standard Dinner every night of the week anymore.  When I was doing The Mom Thing, every night I made sure we had a main dish of meat, a vegetable, a starch (potatoes, rice, noodles), and often, a tossed green salad with homemade dressing.  That's how I grew up, and that's what I knew to do.  Let me tell you, that deal is done with.

Dinners now, whenever I can manage it, are one-bowl affairs, which we love.  I cram all that stuff into a rice bowl, pasta toss, or steak salad or whatever.  One night, we had lemon orzo topped with a tossed salad and roasted shrimp, all drizzled with a lemon vinaigrette.  Very nice.

I also don't cook pork chops, pork steaks, or any kind of fish.  I don't like pork chops, Rick doesn't like pork steaks, (although each of us likes the opposite), and I loathe fish of all kinds.  ALL KINDS, AND YES, THAT DOES INCLUDE TILAPIA AND SALMON.  EVEN YOUR RECIPE SO NO, DON'T BOTHER TO SEND IT.  REALLY, THANKS. 

I desperately want to like fish.  I really do.  I have cooked it in the past (halibut, orange roughy, tilapia, salmon, swordfish), tried it at home and in restaurants, but simply do not like it one bit. You can imagine the reception Rick (who also dislikes salmon intensely) and I got on our Alaskan cruise, where they force-feed you salmon every hour.  Perhaps you don't know this, but salmon in Alaska are like cows in India.  They are sacred and symbolic; they are to Alaska what pandas are to China.  Those people in Alaska are all about their salmon.  Each time Rick and I refused salmon pate, smoked salmon, salmon jerky, salmon caviar, salmon butter, salmon cakes, and salmon sausage, it was as if we handed them a copy of a Communist Manifesto or told them we didn't believe in hunting or fishing.  My anathema toward fish has been nothing but trouble for me.

According to Jared and Sam, I don't cook anything that everyone likes a whole lot ever again.  I'm not sure how this--another Mom Legend--got started, but now, every time they come over and I make something they scarf down like pack animals, one will say, "Wow, Mom.  This is really good."  The other will then say, "Well.  You know what that means."  And they both will say, in perfect unison, usually with Their Father, "We'll never have it again."  Certainly it has its roots in ONE INCIDENT wherein I made something on the fly, they loved it, and then I couldn't or didn't duplicate it or forgot about it.  Big deal.  Are they alive or did they starve to death?  I rest my case.

Now, as far as what I Won't Cook, that part is easy.  Even when it comes right down to it, if Rick requested fish or pork chops, I'd cook them.  In the realm of Cooking, I can't think of anything I'd simply Not Cook. Having said that, I will say that I will refuse to Bake a couple of things because they are just too damn worky.  I should know; I made them once or twice and have vowed never again to put myself through it again.

Both of these Won't Bakes are cookies, and they are fussy cookies, which I detest greatly.  Cookies should be simple and delicious, not tedious and busy.  Look at the top three favourite homemade cookies, chocolate chip, peanut butter, and oatmeal.  Are they labor intensive and nitpicky? No. But the two cooky recipes I have sworn off forever are:  date nut pinwheels and cream cheese kolachi (some may know it as kolacky, the little cookies with the corners folded in).  Both of these recipes made me want to slap someone. Were the cookies good once they were done?  Oh my, yes.  They were fantastic.  Were they worth the stress, frustration, profanity, and promises of revenge and retribution against the originators of the recipes?  I would say no.  (It must be said here that my sister Patti warned me off the date nut pinwheels in the most strenuous of terms.  I should have listened.  She is my rock, and she has never, ever led me astray.)

MsC. says she won't cook liver because she abhors it.  I love liver, absolutely love it.  But I don't cook it because I am the only one who would eat it.  I have a few sadnesses like that--liver, beets, heavy garlic, all things Rick does not care for.  I could eat vegetarian far more often than we do, but the man needs meat.  It's all a compromise, but that's an idea for yet another post.

I look forward to your comments and your Don't/Won't items in the Usual Place.

images
two choices
dead salmon
seal eating
pinwheels
kolachi