cooking is not hard

Kitchens have always scared me. I don't know why. Maybe because I never took much interest in cooking growing up, and my mom would just make delicious meals appear like magic on our table every night. So I just assumed everything cooking-wise must be very hard and difficult and beyond my abilities.

and what I'm discovering is, it's not that bad.

It's actually... really fun

and, depending on what I'm cooking, really easy.

Another thing I love about it is that it's the chance to MAKE something. Not out of words or cut up pictures or magazine clippings or from a musical instrument, or any of the things I typically get creative with. But it's a chance to be creative with flavor, with strange collaborations of tastes, with presentation, with things that are fresh from the earth - and you get to create them into something new. It's like a little art-project, cooking is.

Last night I made my most domestic meal yet - meatloaf (which tasted just like Mom's - a little burst of excitement there!) with mashed potatoes (not instant, thank you very much).

This afternoon, my friend Hannah and I wanted a fun summer lunch. So we made a strawberry-onion-spinach leaf-poppyseed dressing-salad with pesto pasta that was topped with fresh basil and cherry tomatoes. It was YUM and ridiculously easy.

so if anyone wants to have a cooking date with me/offer up some of their favorite recipes, I'm all for that!