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Cooking – Conversation Lesson

Kristin: Hey, AJ, are you cooking anymore? You were cooking down in Southern California, right?

AJ: Yeah, you know my foray into cooking has already ended. I…I don’t know, I guess I was doing it on and off for a month or two but I just haven’t done it in a while.

Kristin: Ha, that didn’t last long. I kind of figured it wouldn’t!

AJ: Yeah, well, y’know, I started doing it because I…for health reasons, because eating out just isn’t healthy. And I was trying to cook healthy food and while Tomoe and I were in Southern California and visiting Indiana, I did it some and I was starting to enjoy it. But then Tomoe went back to Japan early and as soon as she left and I was alone, I don’t know, I just lost all my motivation for cooking.

Kristin: Yeah, y’know, I know Joe, someone who enjoys cooking, he doesn’t like cooking for himself either. If I’m out of town he usually doesn’t really cook. I don’t like cooking, period.

AJ: Yeah, y’know, some people just enjoy it. Y’know, they enjoy it as kind of an art form or as a hobby or, I don’t know, maybe some kind of meditation or something, but for me it’s just about getting some food, right? Like I guess I’m utilitarian in that way.

Kristin: Yeah, me, too. Y’know, I…it’s kind of laziness on my part but also I honestly just don’t have an interest in doing it. Joe grew up from an early age, like he wanted to learn how to cook. His dad was actually the main cook in their family and his dad is a gourmet cook and would make these meals that Joe really enjoyed. And he’s like, “Dad, I want to know how to do this,” and he’s like, “Okay, I’ll show you how to do this and next time you can do it.”

AJ: Well, I hate to blame my parents but maybe that’s part of the problem because neither of my parents were…were cooks really. I mean my mom cooked stuff but it was very, very basic. She certainly didn’t seem like she was into cooking at all. And my dad, he barbecued once or twice a week, maybe, but again, very basic, plain, Midwestern food. Well, you know, your family’s from the Midwest, too…

Kristin: Yep.

AJ: …that section of America, they’re just known for eating very bland food.

Kristin: Yeah, and kind of like what you were saying. My dad doesn’t know how to cook at all and my mom was a very functional cook. She learned how to cook when she got married to my dad. She

needed to learn because he didn’t cook and, y’know, soon after they got married they had my older brother, so somebody had to cook.

AJ: Yeah, because there just weren’t as many restaurants as there are now. Now we have so many restaurants, even in smaller towns, y’know, it’s not just us…so many Americans eat out most of the time.

Kristin: Right. But honestly, they probably, even if there were more restaurants, we probably wouldn’t have eaten out because of a money issue.

AJ: Right.

Kristin: So…but, yeah, she learned how to cook and she was a functional cook like we grew up eating decently but she wasn’t passionate about it by any means, like I would say Joe’s dad is. And so that probably carried over to me. I vaguely remember having some interest, like we would make a cake out of a box, y’know, box cake.

AJ: Huh, never heard of that…

Kristin: Well, everything comes in a box…

AJ: Oh, I see, like a…

Kristin: Yeah, all the ingredients. I didn’t explain that very well, yeah.

AJ: I see what you’re saying. So you buy it…you buy it in a box at the store. It has the flour, it has all the…everything you need and then you just mix it all up.

Kristin: Exactly.

AJ: Oh yeah.

Kristin: I mean Joe would scoff at that, for sure.

AJ: That’s what we did, too, however.

Kristin: Because it’s not made from scratch.

AJ: My mom did the same, we did the exact same thing.

Kristin: So I would have fun doing that but…and I think in general my mom just didn’t have a lot of patience to teach me how to cook.

AJ: Yeah, right. Yeah, and I guess my parents, too. And I think that…I think, too, there’s the love of maybe like, I don’t want to say fine dining, but the love of food, what we call foodies now, people who are really into food and tastes and ingredients and all of that, I think that’s maybe a first step and I know my parents weren’t and still aren’t really into food. Like I said, they still only eat the most bland basic stuff and they always had that utilitarian mindset towards food. I am much more into different tastes, as I know you are now.

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: But the actual cooking part of it’s just never really grabbed me, never interested me a lot.

Kristin: Yeah, it’s funny…Joe, when we first started dating, he thought that he would teach me how to cook and that I would actually want to learn how. And I think up until recently he actually has thought that I’d been afraid. And I couldn’t drill into his head enough, no, it’s not that I’m afraid. I don’t…I’m not interested.

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: You cook, I’ll clean.

AJ: Well, the thing is though, from a…from an intellectual point of view at least, theoretically, y’know, I recognize that it’s a very, very valuable skill. Like I said, if for no other reason than for health because eating out’s not healthy. You never know what ingredients they’re using and they’re usually cutting costs and using less healthy oils and ingredients and all of that stuff. So I recognize that it would be a great skill to have, that it would save money, that it would be much, much healthier. But I just seem to have a mental block against it, y’know? Like I said, I’m starting to enjoy it some with Tomoe but as soon as she left, boom, it’s gone. I don’t know. I might try to get back into it again just because, like I said, I’d like to do it, especially, y’know, we’re going to be getting a kid hopefully soon, so even more of a reason to be cooking at home more.

Kristin: Right. Yeah, I know, I totally agree. It would be…it is so much healthier and I’ve, Joe and I will eat out sometimes at restaurants and we’ll be eating something and one of us will say, “Y’know, we could make this better at home.”

AJ: Yeah.

Kristin: Better ingredients, it would taste better, it would be much healthier. So it’s…for me it’s just laziness. Although I will say there’s something about actually cooking that I don’t personally enjoy but I do like making things like guacamole, I’ve gotten really good at making…

AJ: Mm-hm.

Kristin: What’s something else I just made…

AJ: Gazpacho.

Kristin: Gazpacho I’ve been making recently. So it’s not cooking, y’know, there’s something with the fire.

AJ: You’ve been doing like raw things.

Kristin: Yeah, more raw things.

AJ: Ah, right.

Kristin: Mixing things up, I can do that.

AJ: I was kind of trying to do paleo recipes, so paleo…from the word Paleolithic which it’s the idea that this is what cavemen used to eat, right? The…the traditional diet, I guess, of humans that we evolved to eat. So without so much wheat, for example, which has been, y’know, genetically modified or bred and changed so that it doesn’t, y’know, it’s not so healthy for a lot of people.

Kristin: Yeah.

AJ: So anyway…so I started getting into that and the health aspects of it and then I found the really good one called Nom Nom Paleo, which is like an Asian paleo cookbook. So, I don’t know, I’ll let you know. If I get back into it, I’ll tell you.

Kristin: Yeah, yeah, I’d be curious to hear about that.