The eleventh thing you didn't know about me



The Truth about me Thursday is a 2012 recurring blog post
where I present one truth about myself.


Okay, so far I've written about my drinking habits, my eating habits, and how I like to cook.

Food, food and more food. Story of my life, at least for the moment on my blog.

What I was going to write today was about how I do realize that I'm actually overcompensating with my cooking today the fact that my Dad didn't allow us kids to cook that much while we were still living at home. Which is sad, since theoretical knowledge about how to cook something really doesn't compare with practical knowledge.

I do, however, understand how a stressed out parent might not want the kids to bake something just before the dinner preparations are supposed to start. A sink full of dirty bowls and utensils, and the oven being used, isn't really helping. Cue hungry and not-so-happy family. Hypoglycemic people are generally not very nice.

But cooking is also about learning timing.

Which is really hard, if you're not allowed to practice. Combine this with my time-optimism, and you get terrible results. Especially if you want to cook from scratch.

But, about overcompensation.

I think it might run in the family, because I can't really remember times when the cooks/family has been satisfied with just serving nondescript normal boring food. Although this can be best seen when the family has some big event that needs to have food made... because then we clearly go over the top with the cooking. Like, don't e.g. get me started about Christmas-dinner.

So...
I do it, my father does it, my aunt does it. Their mom (my grandmother, oh how I still miss her and her cooking!) did it, as well as my grandfather. Except he mainly did sausage and meat dishes... which meant that his korvsoppa (eng. sausage soup) had a ratio of 90% sausage, 5% vegetables and 5% water. I'm not kidding. Seriously, I'm not. But he'd worked at a butcher shop, so...

So, for my family I'm quite normal, but I can't really generalize this behavior to just my family. I'm sure there's more wonderful people out there who do exactly the same.


Anyone who eats three meals a day
should understand why
cookbooks outsell sex books
three to one.

(who happened to be an American newspaper
columnist who wrote a lifestyle-column)


Comments

  1. Oh, I just realized that I do the same! Especially if I'm having guests. This doesn't, perhaps, always go so much for what I cook, as much as it goes for how much there is. And then I always end up disappointed with the restrictions people (myself included) have on how much they are capable of eating.

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  2. Last Christmas, my Dad's comment about

    "it's impossible for him to cook for any less than 25 people"

    describes the whole thing all too well. You want to be able to present your guests with WONDERFUL food in ABUNDANCE that will make them SO HAPPY they'll forget themselves and ... well ... eat until they slip into a food induced coma.

    This whole "overcompensation" really creates you into a small unhappy Cook-monster (picture a small thing wearing an apron and banging a spatula against it's head) that desperately tries to prove to the Eaters that "I can I can I can!".

    Hardest are the times when you're supposed to cook for the Cooks in your family. First times, I was soooooo nervous, and I was nearly mentally hyperventilating when we had Micke's Mom over the first time for dinner... But I survived, and now I do feel more confident about it all.

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