shelf paper and cooking styles.

I am worn out, but we are done cleaning the old place. As always, it took years longer than we thought it was going to. :) But it's done now and I am so relieved because seriously, it sucks. Also, I am apparently a filthy person because it required much cleaning. If we don't get our deposit back, I'm going to strenuously object.

You know what a big time-saver was? I am a rabid shelf-liner. I have been known to put contact paper on anything that sits still long enough. I put it on WALLS in the trailer. (This actually looked good. I could prove it if I had a picture online of our old kitchen but it seems not.) There are various benefits to doing so.. I do it because a) my mom always did it and b) it feels more sanitary to me, but it's also to protect your shelves from damage and to look nice and to make for easy cleanup. Another benefit is that when you move, you can rip it all out and your cabinets are fresh and clean without sticking your hands in a bucket of soapy water. I am trying to avoid soapy water as much as possible because my hands are a mess in the winter anyway, and they're worse now with all the cleaning I've been doing. So while I was thinking about shelf paper today, I started wondering what the status with my friends in the computer is on shelf paper. Do you use it? Have you used it? Why, why not? Do you like/dislike it? Do you have a strange fetish for cutting into those crisp rolls and placing them in your cabinets just so? Or is that just me? ;)

And now for something completely different. Well, it has to do with the same room, but nothing else.

My mom asked me while she helped me pack why I cook such weird stuff. (Basically, weird stuff consists of stuff that requires a recipe* and isn't a dessert or has spices beyond salt, pepper or garlic powder in it.) She wanted to know why I didn't cook beans and taters and fried chicken--my family is all about the southern food. Really, what it comes down to is that I tend to cook a whole meal that all goes together. Chicken with basil butter wrapped in bacon, cooked with roasted potatoes and tomatoes. Chicken Gillespie with couscous and sauce. Lasagna. (That one they don't think is weird. Everyone loves my lasagna.)

My family, on the other hand, cooks a bunch of different things, none of which necessarily require anything else. Like, they will have pork chops, so they'll think.. let's fry some potatoes to go with it. And then someone will add macaroni and cheese.. usually with tomato juice added (and which I am not a fan of) because the kids will eat it. And then someone will open a can of corn or greens or peas, and then someone will heat up a jar of green beans that they canned last year, and if it's summer, someone will bring in green tomatoes from the garden and they'll fry those, and then they'll make cornbread, because my grandfather is fairly sure that a meal doesn't count as edible unless it comes with cornbread. Cornbread, by the way, is a bread that is baked in an iron skillet or a metal pan that for the love of God, you don't wash, or you shall Feel the Wrath. Washing the pan apparently washes all the tasty off your next loaf of bread. (My grandfather is the only one who actually keeps special unwashed bread pans.. everyone else is a little more modern and germophobic about their cornbread.) Also, proper cornbread is made by mixing half as much flour as cornmeal into a bowl with a pinch of salt and sodie (what most people refer to as baking soda) and then adding milk until the consistency is just right and then pouring into said pan, which must have already-sizzling oil in a thick layer on the bottom.) I don't begrudge people their fancy cornbreads made with actual creamed corn, or mexican cornbread with its spices, or cornbreads made with like, eggs and crap.. but it ain't cornbread. Here I am talking about this like it's important to me but the truth is, I don't care all that much for it. Except the crispy edge pieces. I'm just saying, that's all.

Anyway. I have always known that my mom thinks I'm kind of weird about food. She thought she had it figured out--she thought that I cook the way I do because of M, and that he wants "fancy" stuff. The truth is that I find the southern way of cooking to be an awful lot of trouble, and there are only two of us so it doesn't really make sense to cook that much food. I also have a real thing for FoodTV, which is really where I learned to cook, and they are much more coordinated than my family is, and so I've picked it up from there. When M and I got married, I couldn't cook much of anything. Now I'm a rather good cook, if I do say so myself. I even enjoy it. My mom is pleased that I am able to cook, because she had despaired of ever teaching me herself. So I think that she has overlooked the main reason that I don't cook like they do.

I can't.

I can't cook any of that stuff the way they do. It never, ever turns out right. Some things I've tried many times before giving up, eating it only on the occasional Sunday. For example, I stopped trying to fry potatoes like they do and switched from the proper cast-iron pan to teflon and changed the seasonings so that I don't get disappointed by how wrong it tastes every time I make them.. now it's just a different dish. I tried it again tonight in an attempt to cook like my mommy, but I still didn't get it right. I am following all the right steps, I cut the potatoes, I fry them in sinful amounts of vegetable oil.. but they just don't taste right. They were good, but not right. I can't even boil a hot dog that tastes right, which is completely crazy. It's a hot dog! How hard can it be? I can make all sorts of "fancy" things, but I can't make a simple thing like a hot dog for myself. As an adult, I really enjoy the Sunday meals most of the time, but as much as I'd like to, I just can't recreate any of it at home. It's such a strange thing.

*Good cook or not, I need my trusty recipe book at hand before I cook something. Most of the recipes I know by heart, but it freaks me out to try to cook something without the recipe close at hand. No idea why it's so important to me, but it totally is.