Adventures in Cooking

I have officially cooked three meals in my married life. This is almost as many meals as I have cooked in my entire college and post-college life. The first was an oldie but a goodie in the Catlin family, chicken and dumplings last week. Then another favorite last weekend, sausage and rice, and just two nights ago I tried a brand new recipe from scratch from my new favorite cookbook (Cooking for Blondes); Shepard's pie. This is one of Jon's favorite meals so I felt the pressure to do it justice, and I must say it was quite a success.

For those of you who know me well, you know that cooking is not exactly my forte nor one of my favorite hobbies. But, it's amazing how much satisfaction you can get from cooking when someone appreciates the effort so much. You wouldn't believe how incredibly happy Jon was to see me try and he was so complimentary of everything (okay, the three things) I made, although I'm sure he was also simply wanting me to feel encouraged to do it again and again.

From what little experience I've had handling food in the U.S., I feel that the maintenance and preparation of food in Germany is somewhat more challenging for the following reasons;

- the refrigerators are small and for some reason the food goes bad very quickly so stocking up for a few weeks (or even several days) is not an option
- on the occasion I do have to go to the German grocery store, they are minuscule in comparison with the U.S. groceries with tiny lanes and no carts or bags for your things. So, the only option is to BUY a plastic bag at the check-out, or come prepared with a back-pack or basket. Once again, stocking up is a no go.

- the one benefit is that because you can only buy a little at a time, you have to visit the market with more frequency and therefore the food is always fresher, even if it does mean wasting some here and there (I'll get my portions down eventually)

So, even though there may not be an elaborate (or any) dish on the table every evening, I'm really going to try my hand at this whole cooking thing again and again, because you never know, maybe someday I'll actually enjoy it!