Cooking Without a Net

One thing I've never been good at is cooking. Well, that's probably not true. One thing I've never considered myself good at is cooking. And cooking is kind of like tightrope walking in that you're only as good at it as you think you are. If you keep thinking you're going to fall, you will, and if you keep thinking you'll screw up and make a disgusting pile of crap instead of pancakes, you will. It's all about confidence.

I haven't done a lot of cooking (at least not by myself), and I haven't done any tightrope walking, but I figured I might as well try to get good at one of them, and I don't have any rope, so cooking it is. A nice bonus to this is that cooking is a lot cheaper than eating out every night, which is what I've been doing for the last three weeks.

As a nice ulterior motive, I want to be able to cook Lauren things from time to time so she'll be impressed with my mad skills and fall deeper and deeper in love with me and think I was the bee's knees and/or cat's pajamas. But for now let's assume all I want to do is cook a good meal and save some money.

Tonight's challenge: Cornbread. And not some instant pre-boxed Jiffy-brand cornbread, oh no, if I'm going to do it I'm going to do it without a net. This cornbread would be from scratch. The reasons for choosing cornbread are two-fold: a.) the recipe for cornbread was roughly "pour, mix, bake", and b.) cornbread is fucking delicious.

So off I was to the grocery store to buy the ingredients. Cornmeal, flour, eggs, shortening, sugar, salt, milk, and all the rest. My apartment came fully furnished, but it didn't have any cooking supplies further than cups and plates, so I also bought a baking pan and measuring cups, too.

Here's a shot of the gooey mixture just before going into the oven:

And here's a shot shortly after coming out:

Looks delicious, doesn't it? Well guess what, it was:



Now it wasn't perfect. The bottom was a little burnt, and the cornmeal was a little gritty, but it was nothing a little butter couldn't fix. And let me tell you, the smell was fantastic. Mmm mmm mmmm it smelled fantastic.

So there you have it. My first (and far from last) solo attempt at cooking, and a successful one at that.