French Cooking

I've spent the morning planning what I will cook for dinner tonight; like I do every Sunday morning.  So many choices, so many ingredients, so many cookbooks!  Do I choose a cookbook written by an actual chef who has tasted food, or do I take the passionate yet pointless advice of a vegan moviestar who eats air for dinner, like Gwyneth Paltrow?  Oh, so many decisions...

As if.  Let's come crashing back to reality, my friend. I don't cook. Well, I occasionally cook, but I would call it obliterating the basic foundations of the food pyramid rather than cooking as such. I am, however, a highly competent chef when it involves pressing a couple of buttons on the microwave. 

If a snooty Parisian food critic ever comes to my house assessing microwave cooking techniques, I will earn a couple of Michelin stars straight away for my superior and savvy style. Ohhh, technique fantastique! they will snort. I know, you're judging me. That's okay, I get that alot.  But when people tell me they enjoy cooking I say - enjoy it compared to what? They probably also enjoy using toilet duck and vacuuming cat hair from velcro carpet.   

Denial: "I love vacuuming the floor.  I don't get to do it very often, but when I get to do it for someone else, it makes me so happy and fulfilled! And a clean toilet makes me fulfilled as well. But if I'm the only one home, I never do it."

I see cooking as a chore, which I why I commissioned French cooking artiste extraordinaire Manu Feidel to come around to my house every Sunday afternoon to prepare a roast or some exotic dish involving pheasant, goat's cheese and other posh-sounding food for my gastronomic pleasure. Are these ingredients supposed to go together? I don't know. See why I don't cook? 

Although Manu didn't show up last weekend.  I can't comprehend his beautiful broken English at the best of times, but I believe he cited some ballroom dancing competition that he was involved in. Honestly, who's going to believe that? He's French, he can cook and he can dance? Yeah right. 

But he did tell me to text - Manu to 191 777 - over and over again. I don't question French chefs, so I have done so. You probably should as well.