To Serve Men

I like to cook stuff and I like to watch cooking shows. This, inevitably, leads me to want to cook almost everything I see on TV.

I don't, of course. My kitchen has no room. The counter-space in nonexistent. To do any real chopping I use a table thing on wheel my mom bought for me about six months after I move up. It's not perfect (and it now has a box fan on it), but it works.

Still, I can't really do, at least well, the things I see on TV. I don't have a food processor or blender, see the no room thing, since I don't even have cupboard space to store them, nor do I have a standing mixer. Someday, though, I will. I'll have room and some of the simpler gadgets that aren't necessary, but really great to have.

Anyway, yesterday I was watching Rick Bayless's show on PBS. He was making carnitas. First he used pork and then he used duck.

My entire being wanted to rush out to and buy a boston butt, or two, and start roasting. I didn't. I mean, what would I do with that much meat. I couldn't eat it and my fridge/freezer isn't very large.

His food looked so good. I swear I could smell it through the TV.

In the end, as with, it seems, every episode of his show, he had a dinner party to serve what he cooked to his friends and family.

And here's where the "dream" (for lack of a better word) falls apart, for me. I want to cook the large quantities of food. I want to roast the boston butt, cook massive amounts of chicken and rice over an open fire on a giant metal platter, and bury a whole pig in a pit to cook all day. I want to do that and I want other people to eat it and enjoy it. I just don't want to be with people as they eat and talk and whatever.

Yeah, I want to do everything that Mr. Bayless does on his show. Except for that last part. I could do without that.