Cooking

Ever since I was 14 I had been going to school full time and working part time or visa-verse.  A whole decade!  Now I'm in the working world and it's a lot different than I thought it would be.  I found myself wondering, "Why didn't anybody tell me about this?  Why aren't there more movies focused on this turning point?"  You'd think it would have enough of an impact to inspire someone to want to touch on.  Then I remembered The Graduate (while floating in a pool, all by myself, no less).  Cue Simon and Garfunkel...

I first saw that movie when I was about 20 and I didn't get all the hype.  Years later I was re-living the 1st act (excluding the Mrs. Robinson equivalent).  I'd spent all my time studying and working towards something... then I got there and the world just opened up in all directions.  It's the opposite of a dead end.  Where to next?

After school, so long as you do your job and cover your living expenses, there is nothing else required of you.  It's a scary thought. If I wanted to sit around in my underwear, eat cereal, and watch cartoons all evening when I get home from work, there is absolutely nothing stopping me.

I feel The Graduate captures the dilemma really well.  That's right, the cereal/underwear/cartoon dilemma.  I would argue the graduate's lack of direction being remedied by a love interest is a bit of a cop-out.  "Surely, there's plenty of other thing to life than finding that other person" I told my single self.  You might be asking what this has to do with cooking.  Well, it's one of my alternatives to the love story fix-all solution.

I'm living on a budget and I have a lot of time, so learning to cook seemed like an appropriate choice.  Here's a few things the most recent additions to my food repertoire that turned out well.  That is, they were pleasing to the eye, and my belly.

Pancakes: Surprisingly easy to make from scratch, and inexplicably better tasting than the mixes

Pizza: Very easy to experiment and improvise.  For some reason, simpler to mix than the pancakes.

Also it gives me another thing to put hot sauce and ranch on.

Food photography has been a topic of conversation at work lately.  These photos are far from great food photography, but it is getting me to analyze the image differently and form better habits.

A majority of the other food I make isn't photographed because it still looks like the globs of food Calvin was forced to eat in Calvin and Hobbes.  Hopefully I will have better food, and photography of said food in the months to come.