As I tossed a handful of chopped fresh cilantro into the hot and soup soup I’m making for tonight’s supper, the thought crossed my mind that this soup, like so many of my stand-by recipes, is really easy. In fact, when I posted the recipe, I called it Hot & Sour & Easy<\/a>. As I tossed a handful of chopped fresh cilantro into the hot and soup soup I’m making for tonight’s supper, the thought crossed my mind that this soup, like so many of my stand-by recipes, is really easy. In fact, when I posted the recipe, I called it Hot & Sour & Easy. Then I … <\/p>\n
\nThen I started to second guess myself. Not about the cooking that was actually underway, but about the casual “oh, that’s easy” attitude I have to most of the things I cook. Initially, I thought, well, it’s really just a matter of having a well-equipped kitchen and a well-stocked pantry – and these are certainly essential to the process, as I have mentioned in previous ramblings<\/a>.
\nBut then I thought about baking.
\nI have a well-stocked kitchen – a whole cupboard, in fact referred to in our family as “the baking cupboard”, filled with different flours, different sugars, different rising agents, different baking pans, and different dried things to throw in to one’s cookies\/breads\/muffins\/cakes.
\nI have a well-equipped kitchen – a Kitchenaid stand mixer, a large oven with convection, whisks in a variety of shapes and sizes, a digital scale, and so on.
\nYet the thought of baking, while it does not, perhaps, fill me with dread, certainly does not appeal to me the way cooking does. I love to cook, but I barely like to bake. My cakes are not spectacular. My cookies tend to be on one side or the other of ‘just right.’ My bread is great – but that’s because I let the Ferrari of breadmakers<\/a> take care of it.
\nI do not bake to relax (which is probably just as well, at least as far as my waistline is concerned). Baking is not easy.
\nAnd custard is just plain mean.
\nSo, when it comes to cooking, I wonder if the things that I think are easy are, in fact, not, really, or at least not for everyone.
\nAnd that led me to wonder two things about you (i.e, the two or three people who actually read my posts all the way to the end):
\n1. What do you find easy that other people might not?
\n2. What do you find perpetually not so easy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"