Picky Grouchy Non-Cook
Personalities Related and Relevant to the Non-Cook
Personalities Related and Relevant to the Non-Cook
The ReFormed Non-Cook
The Reformed Non-Cook is a person who once could not or would not boil a pot of water (for the record, most non-cooks recognize this as a metaphorical expression; come on: we’re not that bad), but now has a little trick to make it boil faster, and what’s more, chooses to serve multiple course dinners to multiple guests on multiple occasions throughout the year, or at least happily flounces up to the kitchen counter on a regular basis to cook meals for her family, often trying out new recipes, excited that thus and such fruit is finally in season again or that thus and such market finally stocks organic pasta.
The Reformed Non-Cook is a person who formerly did not know sushi from sashimi, rigatoni from penne, or toasted from tartre, but currently can explain/interpret the menu at the most nouvelle/asian/fusion/vegan/foodie/fancy restaurant you can come up with. Once on uneasy, hostile, or non-speaking terms with his range, the Reformed Non-Cook now extols its virtues or lusts after another model. The Reformed Non-Cook has come to love ingredients, come to appreciate kitchen equipment, and come around to reading cookbooks. Some may say that the Reformed Non-Cook has buckled to the pressure of a foodie world. Some may say she has flip flopped. If you call the Reformed Non-Cook a lousy turncoat, you will not be the first. Yet the Reformed Non-Cook will giggle or sigh or get tough or get super earnest, because the Reformed Non-Cook is here to tell you: Once a non-cook not necessarily always a non-cook. Like the former smoker may do for the actual smoker, the Reformed Non-Cook can serve as a source of empathy and understanding for the non-cook. The Reformed Non-Cook may whisper in the actual non-cook’s ear: The self is in flux; change is healthy; cooking is a flexible form of expression; image the possibilities…! That is the kind of Reformed Non-Cook who keeps things general and peaceful, respects the non-cook, and acts as an ambassador from the other side. On the other hand, the Reformed Non-Cook can be annoying, unrealistic, mistaken in his capacity for empathy, and prone to dull conversation featuring recipes, clever kitchen techniques, meatballs, and really, who can imagine what else. This kind of Reformed Non-Cook might put his foot in his mouth declaring, “Oh, anybody can be a cook!” As if everybody wants to be. As if cooking is the only darn thing to do in the kitchen! Occasionally, an aggressive, manipulative, excessively prosthleizing, or patronizing Reformed Non-Cook will attempt to intimidate, maneuver, push, or shame the normal non-cook into conversion. Whoa. Put the breaks on that stuff. The kind, considerate, gentle, and boundary respecting Reformed Non-Cook may have a place at any non-cook’s kitchen table, but non-cooks across the land must beware crusaders and colonizers. The Reformed Non- Cook can be a controversial figure. Yet the Reformed Non-Cook can also be a healing salve to the non-cook who finds herself in to-cook-or-not-to-cook turmoil, a happy predictor of things to come, a prophet, to an extent, for some. |