Category: Day-to-day life

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?

Liz invited me to play this game with her a few weeks ago. Since I have some time on my hands right now, why not? The rules are simple:

Each person must post 11 things about themselves.
2. Then answer the questions the tagger sent for them, plus create 11 questions for the people they’ve tagged to answer.
3. Choose 11 people and link them in your post.
4. Notify the people you have tagged.
5. No tag backs.
The catch for me is that I need to find 11 people to tag. So if you want to “play along”, post a comment and we’ll be off to the races.

11 things about me:

• The texture of tomatoes makes me gag. I still plant them in the garden every summer. (Also: artichokes and olives. bleh).
• I consistently think I am taller than I am and am always surprised when I walk by a mirror next to someone who actually is tall, like my husband.
• I used to be terrified by thunderstorms, now I love them.
• My first triathlon was Ironman Canada in 2004. I figured I didn’t know what I didn’t know. How right I was.
• I love reading cookbooks and food blogs but hate cooking.
• If I’m ever given the opportunity to go back to school, it would be to study religion. I’m essentially an atheist, so I think it will help me to better understand other parts of the world.
• I almost always close my eyes in pictures.
• I am not an advocate of air conditioning.
• Smo stands for Small Mean One, a moniker I inherited in University.
• I can remember exactly where I was when I thought of what to name Will, our first born. Not so much for the other 2.
• I’ve been to Las Vegas over 15 times. That’s more than anywhere else other than home in Quebec/BC. This is not something I am proud of.

The answer to Liz’s burning questions…

• What race is on your bucket list?

1. Ironman Kona. I’ll get there one day. Maybe when I hit Sister Madonna’s AG.

• If you could go for a bike ride with anyone, who would it be?

1. Alex Zanardi.

• If you had a super power, what would it be?

1. The ability to stop time for everyone but myself. That, or invisibility.

•   Are you ticklish?

1. Very.

•  Time or money?

1. Time.

• Is life going the way you wanted it to?

1. Yes and No.

• Ocean or lake?

1. I’d like to think ocean but the reality is lake.

• Do you have a favorite quote? What is it?

1. “Don’t say ‘can’t’. Try.” -Me, to my kids.

•   Do you remember your first race? What was it? How did you do?

1. A mountain bike race at Bromont, QC. It was terrifying. I finished 4th.

•   Which word in the dictionary is spelled incorrectly?

1. Incorrectly.

• Do you think Bono and U2 will ever find what they are looking for?

1. If they haven’t found it by now…

My 11 questions for you:

• If you could get on a plane and go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?
• What word or expression do you most overuse?
• What’s the last book you read?
• If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you would do?
• Do you have a favourite season?
• What’s your biggest vice?
• Social media. Yes or No?
• What’s your biggest pet peeve?
• Lance Armstrong: Good, Bad or Indifferent?
• Can you remember what you wanted to be when you “grew up”?
• Sunsets or Sunrises?

Over to you…