Cooking again!

I guess, unbeknownst to me, I have become a cooking/baking addict. With a large family and lots of people coming and going at all times, there is always reason to be cooking and baking in NY. Despite having an active professional life, I am certain that my boys and their friends have a sort of Betty Crocker image of me, working in the kitchen at all hours, for many hours.

Then comes the Google life in California...with no one to cook or bake for. Google provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner on weekdays; on weekends I am out and about or eating very simply by myself. If you open my refrigerator here, it's pathetic...a couple of sagging vegetables. A browning banana on the counter. If you know us from White Plains, you will know that we have refrigerators bursting at the seams...upstairs, and in the basement. The disparity was disturbing. Something had to change.

I have a relatively large kitchen for a studio apartment, so that's not an obstacle. But I am short on all of the tools related to food preparation. Our kitchen in White Plains is near professional-level. We have an industrial oven, and every utensil known to cooking-man...(in triplicate)...Lemon squeezers? we have three. Pots and pans of all sizes. Every scooping and slicing and grating apparatus. (in multiples, for dairy or meat...) A high end set of knives, courtesy of Adam's summer job of 2 years ago selling for Cutco.

So --how to equip a kitchen here, afresh? I start on the cheap, with cutlery from Target. And no lemon squeezer. (You CAN squeeze lemons without one - -wonder!) It's sort of fun to start again from the ground up, figuring out what you really need, and what you don't. I told Jordan I have exactly 2 tupperware containers, each with appropriately-sized lids. (At home in White Plains, we have the standard accumulation of gazillion sizes, with tops never matching the bottoms, and piles falling upon you when you upon the cabinet and pull one out, Jenga-style. Jordan was enthralled...2 tupperware containers with matching lids sounded zen-like...)

I have been going Israeli dancing since arriving in California, Monday nights and Thursday nights. It’s fun, and it’s exercise. So I have started using that as a catalyst for cooking/baking, bringing trays of borekas or brownies to the dance sessions. (I lag behind in the dancing, but I am getting known as the food-preparer…) Plus, I catered a full middle eastern lunch for my colleagues at Google last week. I prepared 6 pashtidot for a kiddush at Etz Chaim synagogue in Palo Alto. And I have had company for brunch, this weekend and last. So I am now getting my cooking-baking fix again, and I won’t be too rusty when I return to NY again next week…