A food friend posted this Adam Gopnick piece from the New Yorker a little while back on her Facebook. It's a few years old but still gets me thinking.
I love reading cookbooks even though I don't need more recipes. I get into how people combine ingredients and hope to see some different cooking methods. Most of us who habitually read cookbooks, blogs, etc. are simply looking to see how other people have creatively done this. Or maybe, to learn about new ingredients. And sometimes, just to drool over food we will never create at home. The ideas do percolate even after perusing a coffee table, chef-y cookbook that is purely aspirational.
But cookbooks do give the illusion of perfection. If you follow these 8, 10, 4, 25 steps correctly, you will achieve the perfect dinner and all will be good in your life. Perfect doesn't exist so don't even go there. But start somewhere and make like Nike. Just do it. Just try something new and see what happens.
Once we're comfortable with basic cooking skills, we can create meals from whatever we have in the kitchen. I'm not talking about a crazy tv show challenge where chefs must make a meal out of coffee beans, grape jelly and squid, but typical weeknight dinners. If your pantry and refrigerator contain the right ingredients, cooking gets easier.
I think most people need to feel like they can do this with muscle memory, that they won't ruin a bag full of groceries, that there's no time to experiment. But, as with any muscle, it gets stronger with practice, and the duration and intensity of the exercise should be increased in small increments. You wouldn't run a marathon without training for months. Likewise, make small forays into the kitchen if you're not already cooking everyday. Make a one pot meal first: a pasta dish, a chicken dish, a soup. Serve a simple salad on the side. I read once that when taking up jogging as exercise that you should increase your distance by only 1/4 mile per week. Per week!
