Experimentation Gone Bad

Last night I tried to make something healthy to eat. See I have been eating out for days now because FunkDaddy has been in the studio all day all week and with my schedule, after working, there is little time to grocery shop, let alone cook. Determined to turn things back around, I went grocery store last night and was all psyched to cook something light and refreshing for dinner.

I set the rice cooker and went to work prepping the ingredients. I have to split the cooking task up, as SoulBaby at five months old has not quite got the hang of being patient. I chopped a head of cauliflower, a handful of carrots, several cloves of garlic and a pound of chicken. That was the point that SoulBaby had enough; I bathed him and put him to bed.

An hour later, I came back downstairs and stir fried the ingredients – first the garlic in some vegetable oil until the smell rose, then the chicken until brown on the outside, then the veggies till done. I added some fish sauce, lime, and chili for flavor, similar to the seasonings used to make pad thai. I had high hopes.

To say I have any culinary training is really overstating things. I have learned a handful of healthy staples from my parents, studied several different kinds of cooking on extended stays in other countries, and scavenged more than a handful of cookbooks for delectable treats. Basically, I am real basic. And then come my experiments, like dinner tonight, that in some corner of my mind seemed like it would taste good.

FunkDaddy didn’t eat it. I ate a bowl of the finished product over rice and it was definitely edible, but not good. I need to stick with some cookbooks for awhile until I get back into cooking. After months of pregnancy backed with months of newborn care, I am ready to start cooking seriously again. By that I mean from scratch.

Since having a baby, I do not have the leisure time or energy to make three courses and bake bread and dessert. I will pick my battles and take shortcuts where available while trying not to compromise my desire to eat healthy and delicious food. My task ahead of me is to grow in the ability to output said food in an extremely quick and efficient manner so that I can be done when SoulBaby is ready for me. What a balancing act.