Beth almost rhymes with chef

I have a confession: I, Beth Whitaker, when it comes to cooking, am hopelessly lost.

The recipe book that I bought myself contains two recipes, and I've only made one of the two: Chocolate mousse. :grins:

I just made myself lunch and realized that it's probably not a good thing that when I sit down to pray I end up praying that God would somehow make my meal taste good.

I've been thinking about the future and how someday :grins: I'll be a wife and part of being a wife to me means cooking for your husband. I used to just think I'd marry a chef and then I wouldn't have to worry about cooking. But I like making things for people and since I'm going to marry Jay (who is not a chef), I should probably get on with the whole amazing cook thing. Problem is, it's not as easy as it looks. I thought you can just throw in stuff here and there but I'm learning that instructions are there for a reason. In anything I learn, however, I don't like following the instructions. I'd rather just improvise and be good. Trouble is that the final effect is usually not quite what I'd imagined. My talents from previous concoctions as a child include giant freezie slushes, milkshakes, and melted cheese on chips. . .so my background doesn't exactly go over well with the whole cooking thing. Another point about the wife thing is that Jay's mom is an amazing cook so now only do I have to cook, I have to be amazing. sigh. the future looks sketch.

and yet there is HOPE! My reason?
: 1) my mom didn't learn to cook until she got married and the stuff she makes is amazing!! 2)Jay can cook some stuff--not sure what exactly tho 3)this is the most important: a bunch of my friends get together usually once a week on tuesdays b/n classes and make dinner so I asked for cooking lessons and they're up for it so I'm excited. Actually, I borrowed a recipe for this pasta the other night from them and made it Monday night for my fam = SUCCESS! The plan is to make my fam dinner every Monday night. .so it should be interesting. :grins:

So, with future cooking successes and failures at my door, I will keep you up to date on whether there continues to be hope or not. As for today's lunch, maybe I was just analyzing it too much, but I have decided that fried leftover pasta with cheese and tomatoes is 1)not the easiest thing to eat as the pasta sticks out every which way when you try to put it in your mouth 2)although yummily cheesy it tasted a bit greasy 3)the recipe in the book looked much tastier than how mine turned out. .sigh..so I think I will refrain from that lunch in the future.

ps. If anyone has good recipes/funny cooking stories, fill me in. :grins: thanks

I'm hopeless, you can't help but grin.

I am in North Bay for an adventure!

But judging by the expression on the store owner's face when I asked where the mall was, there isn't much to see. Course I knew that from my last visit---but this time I'm here cuz Jay started school and I've still got a week off.. Naturally, I'll have a blast when he's around, but its the hours in between those times that it's up to me for an adventure. . hence the fact that it's been lacking thus far. . I've discovered I'm fine in an empty house I can entertain myself but when venturing out in Jay's car to any particular place I feel awfully lonely at the sight of all the other ppl milling around. . so anyways I shall be recording the events of the next three days, 1) to have something to do , 2)b/c somethings are funny to tell , 3)why not. .

Wed. :
- slept last night on a pull-out couch = no sleep
- hung out with Jay
- got a little tour of part of his school--the hangar was the sweetest part, with all these planes and helicopters Jay gets to work on. .makes me almost want to learn so I could fiddle around with stuff.. but i'm hopeless when it comes to technical stuff.
- left Jay at school and decided to go exploring> this is where the first plan failed. . didn't know where to go, ended up at Zellers figuring I'd just hang out there a bit and look at cards-- CARDS?!--what a loser. .that got boring quick so I went and asked directions to a mall...asked for them at least 3 times from the same person as my head didn't not seem to be processing anything.
- drove down some road then got scared that I'd end up on a highway --what?!--anyways chickened out and went back to the house
- got the bright idea to make cookies for the boys--WORST PLAN EVER. . Round 1 = a mass of frizzled chocolate and dough as it all spread out. .my mistake was in putting butter on the baking tray---before you judge, I remembered that from baking a cake once, sigh, clearly butter and cookies = a

sea of burnt mess..
- scooped it off and put it in a bag b/c I didn't know if the trash can under the sink really was a trash can or not, so now it looks like poo in a bag...no joke..
Round 2 = after calling my sister and affirming that the butter was the problem I scrubbed the stupid pan clean and tried again. = another mass of frizzled chocolate only this time it was 8 cookies involved rather than 6---WHY OH WHY WAS I SO CONFIDENT IN MYSELF--moral: never be confident in yourself when you know you shouldn't be. so I frantically oh yea, and then the bag of chocolate poo got stuck to the pan and melted so I had to peel that off.

sigh. so now that I have concluded that it is not the butter, I do not know what to do. therefore I have made a wise decision. NO COOKIES. they can eat the dough or figure out how to make them themselves. ai yi yi. what with the bag of choc-poo in their trash can and the kitchen towel that I've ruined I don't really know if cookie dough will be enough to make it up. sigh. I'm hopeless, you can't help but grin.

Thurs:
-the morning involved sleeping/making new posts on my blog
-the rest of the day was random stuff nothing particularly exciting
-but that night after waking Jay up, I gathered a group of daring adventurerers for a night escapade to a railroad graveyard. Jay and I had discovered it last August when I was up visiting but since I figured it would be a buttload more creepier at night so we decided to go in a group. turns out everyone forgot the whole point of being quiet since we were trespassing. man it was sweet tho. smashed up railroad cars flipped on their side and pieces of crazy stuff everywhere. When Jay and I 1st went, there had been a cable car that was right-side up and since the door was unlocked we walked thru and it was this sweet kitchen area with the glass all smashed up and cannon balls everywhere. in our night adventure, however, we found it ripped to bits and flipped on its side. dude it was creepy all these piles of broken pieces of train parts and who knew what kinda crazy person could be living here. on our August adventure we had climbed up onto one of the railroad cars and planned to show the group but we got split off from them and they went back a diff way so that plan flopped. I found that I'm mostly all talk about those sort of adventures. i mean, I was all eager to go but when I put myself in the midst of it my imagination totally starts playing tricks on me and I get all worried. but the night was sweet, I'd do it again anytime (provided Jay was with me) :grins: . despite sludging through thick mud and grime, it was a good adventure. groovy.

Friday:
- spent the morning napping, then the afternoon watching some random old movie on tv. Picked up Jay at 3:30 and before we went back home we decided to check out these waterfall trails that we went exploring at back in the summer. man it was crazy beautiful because there was so much snow mixed with ice, covering the rocks with bits of moss sticking out here and there. the waterfall itself was so fast, throwing itself off each edge but it was so beautiful.

All in all the week made for some good times. Can't complain. Had fun with my man as usual, an adventure here and there.

The End.

a swinter day [a short story]

after packing as many layers on as I could I started off, toddling down the road on what felt like an adventure simply because of the sheer fact that I hadn't taken a simple walk in ages. . you can make pretty much anything an adventure if you put things in that perspective. . the day was deliciously bright, the skies puffed up with the purest of white to complement the sturdy blue background and the colours all around me seemed to be sporting a summer look, with the shadows leaving plenty of room for the sun to light up the fields. . it was breathtaking. .and yet the one thing that peeled away the label of summer was the chill-driven wind that would sweep in, grabbing wisps of my hair out of my scarf and stroking its cold fingers across my face..it was at this I would shudder and retreat further into my layers and yet its bitter cold could not turn me back because the scene before me spoke of better invitations than a retreat to my house. .

. .and so I continued along concession 6, through the stop sign marking sandford road's meeting place with concession 6 and straight on down the worn gravel. . my destination cannot be described as a place but possibly more as an event, or a thing. . in fact, it was actually unknown, the exact place in which my feet would stop and circle back around towards my house. . and so with this unknown anticipation in mind I continued on my way, scanning the road ahead for any sign of a figure. . the first figure I came upon was an older man who started off from his house down his driveway until I was able to perceive that we would pass each other at exactly the same moment- - he caught by the task of unmasking whatever his mailbox had to offer, and I caught in the line of passing him, and so I offered up a cheerful hello before we reached the crossing point in hope of a friendly neighborly exchange (as seems so common in the country and pleasantly delightful). . he responded with the same and as he reached for the mailbox he commented on the cold wind that had pushed its way into the day and (perhaps into his bones), remarking that it hindered a nice walk, and yet I smiled informing him that the wind was at my back as of now, not so much of an enemy as it would be on my way back. . his eyebrows went up at the thought - -perhaps it had escaped his mind, the thought of a pleasentry walk on a day like this, perhaps he simply assumed I had an immediate destination. . either way, we waved goodbye and I continued on my way. .

. . maybe I should explain the event of my destination so that you will not be concerned as to whether my mind had frozen and had me wandering aimlessly about on a country road until I felt the need to turn. . no rather, the point of my walk was to meet a friend, Robyn Huizenga to be exact and though we knew that we would both set off from our houses at 1 o'clock and both head towards each other, we knew not where the meeting place of initial contact would be. .it was a delightful suprise that kept me from counting down the mailboxes I had to pass, or worrying about the time. .[I wonder if more people made appointments in this way, if people would be less frantic about meeting and more observant of the delight of the occasion--although I do presume that on a city street it could be more stressful, as there are thousands of people destined to catch your eye or attention in place of the clouds and trees this day that caught mine]. . it was after awhile of some aimless scanning that my eyes zeroed in on a particular black dot that appeared to possibly be just another mailbox lining the road, and yet my mind felt as though it could be something else, a person perhaps--possibly Robyn herself. . my eyes were so focussed on this spec that when it seemed to waver as it if was in motion, I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing right. . perhaps it was just the light glancing off the road that made its wavering seem so obvious and yet so faint-- I could not put my finger on any certain possibility and so I continued to watch it. .bit by bit it became more wiggly and as it took on a shape the angle in which it faced me made it appear as if it was imitating a penguin's waddly walk- -in fact the humour of it flicked my imagination into the movie Mary Poppins where all the cartoon penguins appear and I thought of the millions of movies where children simple imagine a character appearing and suddenly it comes alive for them. .I admit, I tried it for a moment thinking my imagination could conjure it up for a second or two. . and it worked for a second, a penguin appeared mirroring the smile on my face and for a split second I was tempted to conjure up a few more, but then the fields beside me caught my eye and the magic was lost in the reality of the silliness I was entertaining. .

. .so I brought my concentration back to the figure itself, still a waddling show of motion. .as it got closer I began to see that the root of the figure were looking more like feet, or boots rather, quickly slipping in and out of the line in which the shape was following. . I waved, a quick sweep of a wave, not really to get a definite reaction but just to see if it would wave back, this little grey-black apparition, that became seemingly more real the closer it got to me. . eventually I got to the point where the figure became a possible Robyn, and with another wave she started running towards me. . I felt caught between running myself, telling her she doesn't have to run and yet I continued to casually approach thinking how odd it felt to walk towards someone you knew you were meeting and yet it was feeling of suprise all throughout. . as she got closer and closer I could see the color black defined as a grey coat and the motion behind her head consisted of her hair flapping wildly in the wind, drawn back behind her by the rush of the run. . we finally met, stopping at our destination to greet with reflected honest smiles and a hug, followed by a rush of greetings and wonder at the gorgeous day. .we turned around to head back along the road towards my house, a walk to be continued and yet though it was the same road, it had hardly the same feel. . looking back I realize I can't even pinpoint the place in which we chose to turn back, the importance of the meeting place was brushed aside by the importance of our greeting. .the walk back to my house was delightful not because of the walk itself (as now--the destination was not a suprise) but rather the exchanges of conversation that we let the wind snatch, here and there. . it was first about the scenery, and then about the friend, with all the normal instinctive planning replaced by the sponaeity of the day itself. . that gorgeous swinter day. . .