"I Make Food!"

“Tonight’s dinner: pumpkin ravioli with blanched asparagus and a mushroom risotto, paired with a crisp Riesling. Thanks, baby!!!”-Facebook status from anonymous wanker

Just like the sanctimonious Woowee, just got back from the gym! I love sweating once every six months!!!  Or the self-congratulating Phew!!! I finished all my arduous, important errands like paying ConEd and changing the cat box! In case you were unaware I am very busy and a very big deal!  Time to relax in front of my marble fireplace that my hunk of a hubby made with his own bare hands!, constant Facebook status updates about being a culinary mastermind is a one-way ticket to Hidesville, Population You.

Actually, all this boasting about the mundane was the impetus for writing this blog. My generation, myself included, seems to be alarmingly proud of functioning as a human being who practices semi-regular hygiene. Wow. You cleaned your bathroom. It’s such an incredible triumph of the human spirit that you are moved to tell 500 of your closest friends, acquaintances and former classmates, including George Glass, the boy who in third grade was your steady for two whole weeks, and whom you haven’t seen or spoken to since before you started menstruating.  If only he knew then how sparkly you can make your toilet now, he probably wouldn’t have been so quick to let you go.

Trust me. I understand that sometimes it’s all one can do to just be. I’m on day two of washing my underwear in the sink because I am too lazy to go to the Laundromat (I’m going tonight, swear). But it’s not something to celebrate. With that said, maybe I’d be a little more tolerant if I wasn’t such a domestic luddite, especially in the kitchen.

A couple Sundays ago, Hadley and I went to my friend Tonian’s apartment in Fort Greene as first time attendees of the Itteh Bitteh Knitting Committeh. The IBKC promised to be an afternoon of intelligent women, champagne, yummy snacks and scarf-making, or, in my case, a crude decoupage of the Manhattan skyline I made for my boyfriend. Surprise! I’m not crafty. That Beastie Boys song was not written about me.

We arrived early to find Tonian finishing up with the hors d’oeuvres: eggplant tapenade, a beautiful mozzarella with olive oil, grapes and roasted peppers with warmed crusty bread. I was in total awe of her tasty and sophisticated-but-simple spread.

“This is lovely, TA,” I said. “I wish I knew how to make stuff like this.”

”It’s really easy, Megan,” she said nonchalantly.

Right. But you know what’s even easier? Calling out for Thai.

Figuring out food in New York is both the greatest and worst thing for a lazy homemaker such as myself.  For every ethnic cuisine that exists, there is a place in your nabe that will deliver. I order out at least three times a week, and my already hilariously tiny bank balance suffers more and more every time. I’m trying to be better about cooking at home, but everything tastes better when someone else makes it for you. My daddy taught me that.

My father is Augustus Gloop trapped inside the body of a physically fit, financially successful 54 year-old man.

“You want to know what I’m thinking about when I’m eating lunch? What I’m going to eat for dinner,” he confessed to me once over a heaping bowl of pho at his favorite neighborhood Vietnamese joint.

Every phone call discussing my impending visit to see my family in Hingham, Massachusetts is an itinerary of the places we’ll eat when I arrive. Every business trip story is a list of the restaurants he took the clients to, the food he ate, the food everyone else ate, how he had both the steak and the lobster and then someone suggested cheesecake and he’s not much of a dessert guy, but he had that too, “like a fucking pig,” as he says. If the old man didn’t run seven miles a day he’d be a total fatty. Or dead of a coronary.

Dad, or Ter Bear, or Captain Teebs, as he is lovingly called by his five children, doesn’t just eat. He also cooks. And he loves cooking for his kids and wife, my step-mother Seanna. About six months ago, he bought a panini maker. He was like Ralphie Parker opening the Red Ryder rifle on Christmas Morning. Capt. Teebs was frothing at the mouth over all the different sandwiches that could be made. My personal favorite is the BLT breakfast panini.

While I certainly inherited his love of eating food (these hips don’t lie, y’all!), my joy of cooking is seriously lacking. Only recently has this started to bother me. There’s a sort of sexiness to knowing your way around the kitchen. Tonian’s ability to go into any kitchen and whip up something inventive and delicious is very attractive. If I were a dude, I would totally wanna hit that (provided she made me dinner first!)

Lately I’ve been trying to expand my arsenal of meals to more than chili mac, tuna noodle casserole, salad and spaghetti. I’ve been working with quinoa and vegetables, and I’ve cooked salmon like seven times and it hasn’t been gross once. Ninety-percent of my cookware and dishes were inherited by other former-roommates, and they’re not exactly quality, but this Christmas, I’m asking Captain Teebs for knives and a food processor. And a ticket to Africa.

Like the asshole whose baby made her pumpkin ravioli and asparagus and mushroom risotto, I have a wonderful boyfriend who likes to cook for me. He makes me omelets for breakfast and pizza with whole wheat dough made from scratch and so many sandwiches. These days I have to fend for myself in the kitchen, trying hard to fight the temptation of calling up my sushi joint (who will even deliver sake in a to-go Styrofoam soup cup). Mike’s away in South Africa until August, cooking for marmosets and lemurs and macaques and their keepers in a monkey sanctuary in Pretoria, South Africa. And no, I’m not making him up.