Christine and the Big Scary Kitchen

The view from my apartment in Colorado Springs

For the last two years I spent in Colorado, I lived alone. It was a beautiful, one bedroom apartment with a huge living room/dining room area and a decent sized kitchen. However, despite the chance to entertain and open my home, I mostly stayed to myself. The few people who came over snacked on fast food or leftover sushi from the fridge. The first year, I had a legitimate excuse– I went to school full-time, worked on the school’s arts magazine mostly independently, was an active member of the honor society and a writing group, ran study groups for all of my classes, oh, and worked full-time. Home was for sleeping and cat snuggling. The most I could do was boil some water and cook some pasta or Rice-A-Roni.

The second year was much different.

this is my adorable cat josephine. this picture is titled "sick days." i was not sick that day (and will never call in sick for a "mental health day" again)

If anyone tells you that there is an easy transition from going to school full-time to being in the real world full-time– they are wrong. Within months of getting out of college, I scored a great job at one of the top 10 companies to work for (and it still is, but for a person at a different stage in his or her life/a different sort of personality.) Though I did what everyone told me to do, I was quickly falling into a deep unhappiness. Not only had I gone from being a very active and community involved student to a full-time worker, I kept receiving feedback from my boss that went from constructive to negative. My entire outlook on life changed and as the economy began to slump, my job prospects began to as well. It was hard to get out of bed in the mornings. It was hard that my friends were still in school and I, always the overachiever, had graduated early and had a little too much free time. I barely read. Sometimes I would make cupcakes or cookies for the office but most of the time I would watch tv, knit, and play with my cat. Anything that didn’t require me to leave the solace of my bed. Eventually, I started working at my favorite sushi restaurant again part-time (Yes, my hobby was working… I have problems, I know). Regardless, I barely cooked and you know what my excuse was?

I didn’t have any time.

My last year of school, being home maybe 50 hours a week, I cooked more than my first year in the “real world.” Fact.

Me, stuck in a snow storm with a toddler in the car for three hours but happier than I was in Colorado Springs at the time.

The thing about not cooking at home because of this or that is it is an excuse and for me, each excuse became a crutch that I depended on. The crutch became my language and my mentality. I did not have to cook at home because I had an excuse. Eventually, as I fell deeper into unhappiness, it spread to the rest of my life until one day, a virtual stranger turned to me and said, ‘You feel trapped. You’re 23. You are not trapped.”

My father has a saying that I openly hated up until that point, “The easy way is the hard way.” It was that moment, at those four words, “You are not trapped.” I realized I was relying on the crutch that is excuses in its entirety and by that I was taking the easy way out.

Every excuse I made was another piece to the crutch. Over time, I had somehow convinced myself that cooking was too hard and too time consuming and too expensive versus eating out. That what I made was gross compared to McDonalds or Lean Cuisine microwaved panini (I will never describe myself as “logical”).  As mentioned in my about me, the kitchen was big and scary.

So what’s this quick journey through a chapter of my life have to do with cooking?

Well now, I look at cooking much like setting up a television. You don’t have to be fully informed of the tubes and wires and microchips a television has to make it work, those are for the people who make televisions for a living. You don’t have know how to set it up for automatic screen adjusters or how to set it up to play wirelessly through your computer or anything super fancy. But you should know the basics of settings and how the cables go into the television, because you have to know whether to call the cable company or the electrician if you get home and it doesn’t turn on.

Cooking can be learned, just like another language, a musical instrument or tying your shoes. Of course it may seem hard at first, but basic meals can save your life. Especially with a brilliant resource like the internet, we have no excuse when it comes to cooking at home.

self portrait in philadelphia.

EPILOGUE: I look back on my last two years of my time in Colorado as an important step in the learning process.  Now, I have chosen to live my life with no excuses, a positive attitude, and a free heart.

my first loaf of bread!