Cooking Meme

From dfordoom.

Do you mostly cook proper meals or do you rely on convenience food, take-away and eating out?

If you do cook do you actually enjoy it or do you do it out of necessity?

How much time is too much time to spend on preparing a meal?

Do you think it’s worth bothering with cooking just for one person?

Is cooking something you’d like to be able to do more often but can’t because of time restraints or lack of energy/motivation?

Answer as many or as few questions as you wish.

My answers:

Do you mostly cook proper meals or do you rely on convenience food, take-away and eating out?
I mostly cook proper meals - I feel I can't trust Lianne and Aki to nourish themselves properly! Food is an afterthought for her and he'd gladly live on starch for the rest of his life, like a potato beetle. What I often do is make "batch food" on the weekend, like batches of spaghetti sauce or stew, freeze it and reheat it during the week after preparing noodles or rice to go under it. But once in a while, we will have pizza or I'll get a roast chicken or something from Safeway, if it's too late or I'm too tired or ill to cook.

If you do cook do you actually enjoy it or do you do it out of necessity?
I enjoy cooking, I really do. I do get stressed out at the end of preparing a meal, when everything has to be ready at the same time, and I hate having anyone in my "cookin' room" when I'm working there - it's very distracting.

How much time is too much time to spend on preparing a meal?
When I make "batch food", I start in the early afternoon and let it cook until the evening. Sometimes I make a roast or a ham. I wouldn't want to do that every day.

Do you think it’s worth bothering with cooking just for one person?
Sure it's worth cooking for one person, if that person is you and you care at all about what you eat. It's cheaper too.

Is cooking something you’d like to be able to do more often but can’t because of time restraints or lack of energy/motivation?
I don't get home until after 5:30 so don't have time to make an elaborate meal every night, but I do alternate the reheated stuff with quicker easier meals like taco salad, pork scallopini, or stir fries with bottled Asian or Indian sauces. The plan this year is to incorporate a lot more vegetables!

Weekend Away

Yep, this weekend Lianne and I went over to Couverville to see The Residents, among other things. It was lots of fun mostly, and rather underlined that I ought to get out more, but perhaps I ought not.

We went over on Saturday morning, saw red_thread and other Gothvic people on the ferry - they were headed over for the Goth Prom that night, so had duffel bags full of costumery with them. We stayed at the Holiday Inn at Howe and Nelson, which is Lianne's favourite. It's convenient, I'll say that.

We walked around for a few hours; she went to seek out a pair of shoes and I went to seek other things, and to scout out where the show was that night - the Rickshaw Theatre, just a block and a half away from the infamous Hastings and Main. That whole area of Hastings reeks of weed and used booze and anger and barely contained violence and mental illness.

Spartacus Books has moved about ten blocks away from where it was, and I had no time to trudge that far - but fortunately McLeod's Books on West Pender is still open, though every time I go there there is less room for the customers. It's almost impossible to move in there without knocking something over, the heaps of books are themselves heaped on other heaps and everything is only barely organized according to subject. But the prices are OK on a lot of things and they had a sale on hardcover books. I went back the next day and got some Edward Gorey books I had missed the day before, and went to Criterion Books across the street - smaller than Mcleod's but even messier, with a creaky floor that seemed bound to buckle under the weight of the books - and then to Albion Books just up the street, much nicer and better organized. I mean, I love old bookstores full of junk but after a while it's just a task trying to find anything at all. Anyway, I am amazed these three stores are still hanging on, as independent booksellers are closing up everywhere.

Back to the hotel, quick shower, rest the feet and then we walked to the Rickshaw. Lots of seats in a gently sloping floor, perhaps it was a movie theatre once upon a time. Anyway, the place was sold out and as soon as the show started everyone got up and stood next to the raised stage, so we had to go too. This was only the second time I had seen The Residents, there were three of them this time. The sound system was turned up way too loud and I could not tell what "Randy" (the Resident who I think has been the main singer for most of their 40 year career) was singing half the time. Got an eyeball tee-shirt and a CD of Not Available. Lianne had never seen them before and pronounced it the weirdest thing she'd ever seen.

Kind of an expensive weekend (ferry fare for a car and two adults is almost $75 one-way, and is going up soon), and I still don't think I could ever live in or near Vancouver, but it was a fun time. Found myself gawking up at the skyscrapers like some rube.