Cooking “Well”

It has been woefully long since my last post.  I left full-time employment on June 30 and you’d think that would leave me with much leisure time for things like blogging, but we went on vacation for ten days and since then I have been in turbo-nesting mode.  My husband oscillates between amusement at my third-trimester behavior and mild panic that all this frenzied laundering of baby clothes and re-organizing of closets means our second child is making its debut any minute.

Cliches aside, I am quite enjoying having two days a week to putter at will before the baby is born, and I am dipping a toe back into experimental cooking.  Of course, these days Babyman mostly just eats variations of what we eat — pasta, fish, turkey burgers, tacos/quesadillas, etc. — but fruit and veg are an ever-present challenge, and there is the previously-discussed issue that “what we eat” has become a bit…repetitive.  So the extra downtime has given me a chance to think outside the usual weeknight rubrics.  At last!

The San Francisco Ferry Building Farmer’s Market is amazing, and we happen to live across the street.  However, on Saturday mornings it is also a ZOO, impossible to navigate for all the Cadillac-sized strollers and coffee-guzzling hipsters, so we made an unspoken agreement several months ago to avoid it at all costs.  (Particularly since our Bugaboo Frog and cups of Peets would put us squarely in the category of worst offenders.  And as much as we probably are “those people”, we try like hell to deny it.)

But now I have Tuesdays and Thursdays off, which means I can easily frequent the little sister of the Saturday behemoth: Farmer’s Market Tuesday.  A long walk followed by a massive farm-fresh peach while I watch the last half hour of Kathie Lee and Hoda in my quiet apartment is the ultimate summertime/late pregnancy indulgence.  Grocery shopping at 11am on a Tuesday is similarly pleasant and allows one’s imagination a bit of room to roam.  Food is fun again.  Aaah.

All of this has gotten me thinking about what it means to cook “well” when you are juggling work and family.  In the loosest-possible terms, cooking “well” would simply mean producing home-made dinners the majority of nights.  In a more ideal definition, cooking “well” would also mean that said dinners are delicious and inspired.  Most of us probably fall somewhere in the middle: we get something nutritious on the table the bulk of the time, and hopefully one or two nights a week that something is also really tasty.

While I love having the time to plan a midweek meal on a Tuesday morning, I firmly believe that grocery shopping in the financial district at 6pm on a weeknight while pushing a stroller and carrying a laptop is a skill unto itself, and one I am glad I have in my back pocket!  Which brings me to my conclusion: Cooking well when you are busy is about organization: shopping lists, a well-stocked freezer, a few recipes you know by heart.  Cooking well when you have a little time on your hands is about inspiration: access to quality ingredients and cookbooks, and the time to play with them.  You need a little bit of both to keep it up without losing your mind or dying of culinary boredom.