Dear Friends, Fellow Non-Cooks, and Non-Cook Sympathizers:
As a champion of the non-cook cause and an open non-cook, my friend Sarah's feeling that I am a cooking shark-- a person who hides her ability to cook-- has given me cause for reflection. The question of my cooking shark status brings up a certain convolution in my life as a non-cook, and here is what it is: It is much, much easier for me to say I can't do something than for me to say I don't want to do something. Both are excuses for the not doing, but can't is way more comfy. And if can't is on the pay roll of don't want to, at least you know it's getting compensated for serious work. That is, the work of justifying the not doing. Can't is trying really hard to do it's job, and that is why there's a can't style No-Confidence Non-Cook fully developed within the confines of my non-cook consciousness. But what about the actual cooking? Am I the ding dong who can cook but doesn't know it? What kind of person knows how to cook without knowing it? Someone both clueless and deluded. Someone overly dependent on her inability. Someone at the bottom of the food chain in terms of self concept: more guppy than shark. Meanwhile, even as the true can't style No Confidence Non-Cook weirdly asserts herself in my consciousness, wringing her hands and apologizing, the total Picky Grouchy No-Cook Non-Cook lurks behind a wall, ready to wack No Confidence over the head with an industrial size box of Wheat Thins and take over her website, brazenly declaring that don't want to, and even the dreaded won't, are just as legit as can't any old day, and that how, or if, you justify your non cook status is your own business. I guess that actually happened, Picky Grouchy taking over like that. Except the presence of No Confidence still lingers around the place along with a host of other non-cook types to whom I've sworn some inner allegiance: The Mega Cook Spouse Non-Cook, the No-Eat Non-Cook, the Self-Hating Non-Cook, the Pro Bake Non-Cook, and of course the Questioning Non-Cook. Oh the convolution! Oh the contradiction. But seriously, can I cook or not? Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm so nutted up about the whole thing that I don't even know anymore! The two people I make food for most frequently are my children. My son Rock has taken to saying, "Mommy, you're the best cook," but Rocky doesn't eat many foods at all, and I more or less mostly give him the ones he eats, so the circle is pretty small. His perspective on the matter is very specialized. My son Cosmo does not hesitate to make fun of my cooking, but then again he also makes fun of my haircut and my butt in the same way if not the same breath, and honestly I think I have to maintain a total lack of concern for his opinion on those topics. Possibly best not to get involved with what he thinks of my cooking, either? It's a wash with the kids. Maybe I should look more closely to myself for the answer. I do know this: The power of suggestion is powerful. So if I say that my frittata sucks, maybe you will start to think so, too, and if you think the frittata sucks maybe you will not eat it, and if you don't eat it, my gosh, what's the point of me making it at all? Do I know how to make a frittata? No. That was just a hypothetical. Have I ever really tried to influence your opinion of my hypothetical fritatta in order not to have to make it? No. That's just an imaginary tactic of the hypothetical marginalized non-cook. However, I acknowledge that although I definitely can't make that hypothetical frittata, I might be able to do a pretty good job on a real one given enough time and chances to practice and the stars lining up right, and if I did do a good job I'd be very proud, and I might even glow a little with the happy unlikely thrill of it, though I think I wouldn't go around discussing it, except if pressed and in the most self deprecating terms available. Such is the eternal allure of can't. Yours truly, Evan Harris
Picky Grouchy Non-Cook
aka Jaws |
Cooking Shark: "One who purports to have no cooking experience but is actually a stellar preparer of edibles" --Sarah Halweil, coiner of the term |