Cooking and Exercise

The title of this post is misleading -- I am not going to give you tips on how to do leg lifts while roasting a chicken.

Rather, my point is that cooking -- for me at least -- is a lot like exercise. It's an effort for me to actually do it, but when I do it, I always feel better. I never regret having exercised and I rarely regret having cooked. If I slack off and stop exercising for a week, it's always a huge struggle to get start again. The same goes for cooking.

After my "time off" during the holidays, it's been a challenge to get back into the routine of cooking dinner every night. So last night, even though the kids and I had pizza with friends, I decided to cook something small just to work out my cooking muscles. Also, I didn't want Avo to fear that I had returned to my old undomesticated ways.

I was so out of practice that I actually fouled up the rice -- and I was using a rice cooker! I made my old mistake of using one cup of water to one cup of rice, instead of two cups of water. Not surprisingly, the rice turned out dry and pretty much inedible, so I had to dump it and start all over again (thankfully, I got it right on the 2nd try).

I was also determined to use the broccoli that was withering in the fridge. If broccoli had eyes, it would be looking at me accusingly, imploring to be used. The same was true for the packaged tempeh that was nearing its expiration date.

In my old undomesticated days, I would have stared at the ingredients without a clue as to how to proceed. But last night, I knew enough to stir fry up the coconut curry marinated tempeh strips with the broccoli and serve it with rice. Simple, healthy and delicious.

Avo was relieved to see that I haven't abandoned my quest to cook and pleased that I wasn't letting the ingredients in the fridge go to waste. Of course, now I need to go food shopping and figure out what to cook next.

Cooking really is a lot like exercise -- no matter how much you time and energy you devote to it one day, you've got to start all over again the next day. Hopefully, I'm gaining some momentum.