Make food than go out. I know it sounds crazy, it's hard to believe myself, but I actually opted for making dinner for the boyfriend and I the other night than going to Town Hall for dinner. There's something about the meditative feeling of stirring a bowl of chocolate just off the double boiler until it's cool or placing slices of bread in a pan for french toast that just...soothes. I think other people before me have talked about this (in fact I know they have) but still, it surprises me. It is a wonderful thing to provide food for someone else. It is a wonderful thing to put that much love into something that will nourish a person. It is also a brain stimulus - cooking is a little puzzle that starts out on a piece of paper or in your head and ends up in your mouth. You have to have a sense for it, too. You have to smell when the brownies are overbaking or when the proportions on a recipe look suspicious. You have to know.
It is a skill and an art and I love it.
