I also love to cook, though I’m not very good at it. Often times when I cook, I like to pretend I’m starring in my own Food Network show. Speaking of the Food Network, ‘member back in the day when it was filled with cooking shows? Now it seems that it’s full of competition shows. Bring back the cooking shows Food Network.
Anyway, like I was saying, I love to cook. I take it very seriously, but no matter, that hasn’t had much affect on the taste. I’ve been told that my food is sort of a tease, it smells great, then tastes bland.
But the fact of the matter is, cooking is an art. Not just anybody can do it. Like everybody can’t be a writer, or a singer, or a painter or whatever – cooking to me is an art.
I love a good home-cooked meal. Like when you get a meal from somebody who can really cook, um, it’s just – no words. I’m salivating now. It’s better than restaurant food.
The first time I had the Jamaican dish curry chicken I was at a pot luck at the end of the school year in grad school. They called it Karamu. There was this girl, one of my classmates, who had a way with men. She seemed to never have trouble getting one, and when she did they tried very hard to impress her. Well, she brought her latest catch (wait, does that sound sexist?) to our little shindig and he made a big pot of curry goat or chicken – one of them. People were talking about how good it was, but I had never had it before, and when I looked at it, it looked like green baby shit, so I steered clear, and munched on the other goodies there.
When it was time to go, you know how Black people always want you to take some food or taste they food, so to oblige I plopped a little of that army green mush on my plate. I was just being nice. When I got home I would most certainly throw it away.
Huh, the joke was on me. When I got home, I tried a little taste. It was so good, I ended up licking my Styrofoam picnic plate, mad at myself for not getting more. It wasn’t long before I was looking up and hitting up every Jamaican restaurant in Atlanta trying to reexperience that taste. It never happened. Nothing I bought could replicate the yumminess of that man’s home cookin’.
That was just a little something for nostalgia sake, as I prepare to get me another piece of watermelon before I go to bed, because I love food.
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