I Love to Cook

I started early. I loved hanging out in the kitchen when my dad whipped up a batch of pancakes. He was a master of breakfast. It was in his blood, in way, or at least a habit. My dad was a cook in the Army, so he had plenty of practice preparing large breakfasts early in the morning. I woke up so many mornings to the entire breakfast spectrum of smells. Sausage, bacon, eggs, pancakes, french toast, and more still smell like home, like childhood. I appreciate my parents for instilling in me a love of food and the desire to cook it well. Of course, I have a drive inside me (thanks to that mild case of something I have mentioned in earlier posts) that obsesses over perfection. I have spent years working to perfect different recipes, and sometimes it still isn't enough. No matter how good something turns out, I am already thinking about ways to improve upon it in the future, so imagine how devastated I am by complete failures in the kitchen. Anyway, I was thinking about this as I reflected on how well I cooked pancakes tonight. It was not my dad's recipe, but I am my own man, my own cook in the kitchen. I have taken what he and my mother gave me and improved upon it, and I am not afraid to say that I have improved upon it by leaps and bounds. Why am I not afraid to say that? Because I am the only one who needs to like my food.