"BAM! Kick it up a notch!"

Going off to college really made me appreciate the food that had been prepared for me my entire life. I thought everyone ate steak for Sunday dinner, wrong! My parents are gourmet chefs, and they have a daughter than can't even successfully make ramen noodles! After serving me fancy pants food my entire life they sent me off to a college whose dining halls serve pasta out of Rubbermaid containers (gag me!). I vowed never to eat the noodles or anything else prepared by the dining halls my entire freshman year!

Thankfully, after surviving off of peanut butter and bagels for breakfast, lunch, and dinner my freshman year, sophomore year I got my own kitchen. Oh wait, to fill that kitchen I had to grocery shop! Solution: I called mom as I aimlessly paced up and down the isles of the grocery store and she told me what to pick off the shelf (no lie). Although she tried to think easy it still required major effort! Thank heaven for apples and baby carrots. Year two: check! Junior and Senior year, I got smart, I made friends who like to cook (and share)! Post-college, genius, move back home with the parents...

To explain my passionate hate of the cooking, I will compare it to slavery. I would wager a guess, we all dislike forced labor or being treated as another persons property. To make a meal you literally become the property of a cookbook, taking orders blindly. When you attempt to cook you are a slave to your kitchen for multiple hours for a meal that can be consumed in fifteen minutes. The whole system is really inefficient. To make matters worse, as if cooking a meal isn't an accomplishment itself... it requires grocery shopping, which might be worse than the actual cooking part (foreshadowed earlier).

There is more to my cooking saga. We have established that I like delicious fancy food (as long as I do not have to cook it), and that I despise grocery shopping. Life would be too easy if those were my only stipulations, luckily they are not. I like to eat fresh, non-preserved foods. In my ideal world, the majority of my fruits and veggies are grown locally. I am also health conscious. Translation: I do not like eating out, or slaughtering and cooking (and enjoying) animals, or that high fat/bad for you stuff (butter, cream, salt, etc).

Of course, there are exceptions... I will eat out in the company of awesome people (and usually if the company is terrible, but the meal is free). I love Moe's (most definitely not the most healthiest restaurant), but they are vegetarian friendly. And if someone else is cooking for me (often times the case) I try not to complain about the ingredients used. My parents would beg to differ. Luckily, as much as I like gourmet food I enjoy bland food and fat-free cheese and potatoes with nothing on them.

It is more than appropriate that as I sat here and typed away on the computer my parents are watching Top Chef Masters.