{"id":1396,"date":"2014-06-12T21:57:31","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T02:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2014-06-12T21:57:31","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T02:57:31","slug":"when-the-cooks-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/?p=1396","title":{"rendered":"When the Cook’s Away…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"woman-cooking\"<\/a>Last night I cooked dinner.\u00a0 The night before that I also cooked dinner.\u00a0 This is nothing remarkable for most people, and it shouldn\u2019t be remarkable for me, except that the kitchen has long ceased to be my domain. I was never an exceptional cook, although I held my own cooking for myself during the years I lived in New York.\u00a0 Of course, in New York, you don\u2019t really ever have to cook from scratch, and my meals were very often a matter of putting together the elements of the partially prepared food I had bought at Fairway or Zabar\u2019s, with the occasional experiments in real cooking only when I had the time and patience (both, at the same time).<\/p>\n

My husband is very much the cook in our family and I\u2019ve become incredibly spoiled by his simple, yet tasty and imaginative day-in\/day-out cooking.\u00a0 He effortlessly whips together a scrumptious meal in twenty minutes flat from what I thought were bare cupboards.\u00a0 When we were first together, I cooked some and he cooked some. Then he cooked more and I became the \u201csalad person.\u201d That designation eventually petered out too.\u00a0 Now I keep Andreas occupied while he cooks, and then he usually keeps Andreas occupied while I clean, which I AM rather good at and enjoy doing.\u00a0 However, with Dave out of town this week, I\u2019m playing cook again.<\/p>\n

So, last night as I traversed bewilderedly and repeatedly the length of our new kitchen in our new house where I am still trying to remember where I put everything, I realized that, well, maybe I can cook to at least an acceptable degree, I\u2019m just very out of practice.\u00a0 My method right now is, shall we say, a bit like driving a bus. I use every pot and and every utensil.\u00a0 I start cooking in one pot and have to transfer to another.\u00a0 I do everything out of order so that one dish ends up overcooked, another ends up cold, and that last thing – I\u2019m still waiting for it to finish.\u00a0 It eventually gets done and it\u2019s edible.\u00a0 Actually Andreas gobbled it right up – a good sign coming from his incredibly refined palate (for a two-year-old) which, like mine, is spoiled by Dave\u2019s cooking.\u00a0 So I did it, but it took double the time it should have and the kitchen was a disaster area.\u00a0 In a word, I am INEFFICIENT.<\/p>\n

In cooking and in horn playing (and in anything else that takes effort to be good at) it is easy to slip into the mentality that the knowledge and direction given to us by teachers or mentors is what makes the difference.\u00a0 It occurred to me (as I was cleaning up the mess I made) that, no matter what you \u201cknow\u201d and no matter who has given you input, it is the day-in\/day-out practice and working-through of that knowledge that allows it to be usable and worthwhile.\u00a0I watch Dave cook all the time and Food Network is one of the two channels we watch in those rare times that the TV is on, but when I make bacon three times a year and he makes it 362 days a year, his bacon will inevitably be the bacon you want to eat.<\/p>\n

So, although teachers can make a profound difference and provide invaluable guidance, there is nothing they can say that replaces that daily work and experimentation. This is the completely in the hands of the student.<\/p>\n

The English language only has one word for know<\/i>, but I love that other languages have different words for the various shades of knowing.\u00a0 Knowing a fact is very different than incorporating it into your being and understanding what it is all about.\u00a0 That is the only kind of knowing that transforms. \u00a0And it is the only kind of knowing that allows for a delicious meal that, not only tastes like home, but feels like home to make.<\/p>\n

So, happy practicing and happy cooking (if that is on your agenda as it is on mine). I did play my horn today, but, I admit, we went out to eat tonight. Come home soon, Dave!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I cooked dinner.\u00a0 The night before that I also cooked dinner.\u00a0 This is nothing remarkable for most people, and it shouldn\u2019t be remarkable for me, except that the kitchen has long ceased to be my domain. I was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-habits","category-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1402,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelashornstudio.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}