Making a better me?

In the fall of 2004, I taught myself to like red wine.  Until that point, I loathed the stuff.  It took a while, but I got the hang of it and now – even though I can barely tell a good one from a cheap box one, I enjoy it.

Bear with me, there’s method to my madness.

I’ve been off work now for about a month and pondering my next move.  While I’m enjoying the freedom that comes with being home full-time, I’m getting antsy to do something outside these 4 walls.  However, since I’ve decided to seek out the “perfect” gig – if there is such a thing, I’m filling days until that happens with various projects, plans and adventures.

One of these projects is learning to cook.  Oddly, I am semi-obsessed with food blogs, cookbooks and recipes.  I love the pictures of food that Shira takes and how she makes veggie food look so easy and delectable (I am not a vegetarian).  If someone links to a recipe on their blog, I feel obliged to click.  I can spend hours looking a pictures of food on Pinterest (my own personal productivity vortex) and thumbing through recipe books.  I so admire my friends who can make delicious meals from scratch, with little or no guidelines.

I think eating out is a luxury – one of my favourites.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or high-end for me to enjoy it.  I love that someone else has taken the time to prepare something that I want to eat.

And yet.

I really, really dislike cooking.  I am not good at it, never have been.  If I set foot in a kitchen with the intent of making something, I get easily distracted by almost anything else and, worse, someone will almost always comment “ooh look!  Cogger’s in the kitchen”!  This makes me want to turn on my heel,have cereal for dinner and let everyone fend for themselves.

So back to my learning to love red wine.  I figure I’ve got time now, maybe I can teach myself to like cooking?  I initially thought that I would do something insane like trying a new recipe daily and then realized that that was just setting myself up for total failure.  So I’ll start slow, maybe twice a week?  The trick will be making things that everyone – including me – will like to eat.  And that doesn’t mean making cookies every day.

Since I like round numbers and things to be *just* so, I’ll start November 1 and give myself a month.  I figure this gives me lots of time to continue to peruse recipes and pretty pictures of salad, guilt-free, until at least October 30.

Maybe if I cooked while drinking red wine it would make the learning curve less steep?