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Entry tags:
On cooking, on learning, on studying, on skills.
Made potatoes and eggs for dinner-1, which means this week I have made TWO DINNERS from scratch.
This is approximately the same number of dinners I have made from scratch from the, oh, three years prior to this week0.
It is very confusing and I still don't like cooking, but I have an uncomfortable suspicion that I don't like cooking in the same way I would previously say I don't like singing1. Which is to say, with a underlying current of being a teenaged genius who hates anything they're not immediately excellent at.
Apparently 25 is the age where I start to put actual work into developing skills, instead of just assuming that they should be granted to me instantaneously because I'm awesome. I mean, I still assume I should just get random new skills every time I level up, but I am willing to accept that I am entering more of a runequest model rather than DnD, and only have my skills increase when I actually use them.
Also, I was much younger when I decided I needed to learn how to juggle, and I can do a cascade AND a reverse cascade now and I am more proud of that fact than I am about my kick-ass SAT scores. Because you know what? I have a brain that is excellent at standardized testing. I do not have a brain that is excellent at juggling. But I have a brain that is willing to carry around juggling balls basically constantly for, jeeze, two and a half years now and practice with them in odd moments, despite the surrounding people laughing at me.
I didn't have that skill and now I do, and no, I am not a remotely impressive juggler and might never be, but I can do a standard three ball cascade.
And I don't know how to study. I didn't have to work in school --I failed assignments because they were boring, not because they were difficult. I don't know how to acquire skills I don't already have --and I am blessed with the mind and body to start off pretty good at a lot of skills2.
But I didn't know how to juggle, and always assumed it was a lot of flailing your hands around, but no, it's just a lot of practice and trying again and again and again until you can do two catches in a row, then three, or five, or ten.
So I have taught myself how to juggle. And I may teach myself how to cook. I already know some things, I already have some recipes. jere7my's egg salad, Magus's mac and cheese, Natasha's pancakes, Neva's brown sugar icing. My random flailing and throwing ingredients into a pot to make curry.
I might never be able to remember what "simmer" means, or feel comfortable using a "pinch". But I can make a roux and a simple syrup, I can crack an egg one handed, I know how to season cast iron. I don't think I'll ever make pasta from scratch, but you can buy it from the store. The sauce is the better part anyways.
Perhaps the cat ears will become a less foreign part of my costume.
~Sor
MOOP!
-1: You should take this whole entry with a grain of salt, since I am talking about cooking like I'm hot shit, but literally all I did was dice a potato, toss it in some bacon fat, throw on some salt and pepper, stir occasionally. Eventually I pulled the potato off, cracked in four eggs, a dash of milk, more salt and pepper, some shredded cheddar, and stirred a bunch. Culinary challenge, this was not.
0: I assume pasta wouldn't count unless I made the sauce. I made 2 AM chili, back when I lived in Dinosaur Sashay, and I made chicken and rice for SoNSo that one time he was visiting.
1: Granted, I don't ever expect to feel the fondness for cooking that I do for singing, but, you know. I could grow to "neutral to positive" instead of "pretty firmly negative".
2: My ability on stilts is the most recent of these I've observed --I understand the physicality of stilts pretty darn well, and did so from the very first time I was up on them. I pushed myself to learn how to fall, because otherwise I wouldn't know what to do if I tripped.
This is approximately the same number of dinners I have made from scratch from the, oh, three years prior to this week0.
It is very confusing and I still don't like cooking, but I have an uncomfortable suspicion that I don't like cooking in the same way I would previously say I don't like singing1. Which is to say, with a underlying current of being a teenaged genius who hates anything they're not immediately excellent at.
Apparently 25 is the age where I start to put actual work into developing skills, instead of just assuming that they should be granted to me instantaneously because I'm awesome. I mean, I still assume I should just get random new skills every time I level up, but I am willing to accept that I am entering more of a runequest model rather than DnD, and only have my skills increase when I actually use them.
Also, I was much younger when I decided I needed to learn how to juggle, and I can do a cascade AND a reverse cascade now and I am more proud of that fact than I am about my kick-ass SAT scores. Because you know what? I have a brain that is excellent at standardized testing. I do not have a brain that is excellent at juggling. But I have a brain that is willing to carry around juggling balls basically constantly for, jeeze, two and a half years now and practice with them in odd moments, despite the surrounding people laughing at me.
I didn't have that skill and now I do, and no, I am not a remotely impressive juggler and might never be, but I can do a standard three ball cascade.
And I don't know how to study. I didn't have to work in school --I failed assignments because they were boring, not because they were difficult. I don't know how to acquire skills I don't already have --and I am blessed with the mind and body to start off pretty good at a lot of skills2.
But I didn't know how to juggle, and always assumed it was a lot of flailing your hands around, but no, it's just a lot of practice and trying again and again and again until you can do two catches in a row, then three, or five, or ten.
So I have taught myself how to juggle. And I may teach myself how to cook. I already know some things, I already have some recipes. jere7my's egg salad, Magus's mac and cheese, Natasha's pancakes, Neva's brown sugar icing. My random flailing and throwing ingredients into a pot to make curry.
I might never be able to remember what "simmer" means, or feel comfortable using a "pinch". But I can make a roux and a simple syrup, I can crack an egg one handed, I know how to season cast iron. I don't think I'll ever make pasta from scratch, but you can buy it from the store. The sauce is the better part anyways.
Perhaps the cat ears will become a less foreign part of my costume.
~Sor
MOOP!
-1: You should take this whole entry with a grain of salt, since I am talking about cooking like I'm hot shit, but literally all I did was dice a potato, toss it in some bacon fat, throw on some salt and pepper, stir occasionally. Eventually I pulled the potato off, cracked in four eggs, a dash of milk, more salt and pepper, some shredded cheddar, and stirred a bunch. Culinary challenge, this was not.
0: I assume pasta wouldn't count unless I made the sauce. I made 2 AM chili, back when I lived in Dinosaur Sashay, and I made chicken and rice for SoNSo that one time he was visiting.
1: Granted, I don't ever expect to feel the fondness for cooking that I do for singing, but, you know. I could grow to "neutral to positive" instead of "pretty firmly negative".
2: My ability on stilts is the most recent of these I've observed --I understand the physicality of stilts pretty darn well, and did so from the very first time I was up on them. I pushed myself to learn how to fall, because otherwise I wouldn't know what to do if I tripped.