I always look forward to dinner time.

Growing up I always looked forward to dinner time because my mom always made something good for the family.  Dinner time always came around 6:00 and was usually something everyone enjoyed.  Every so often we would go out to dinner, that came in waves though.  I remember at one point in my life my parents and I would go out to eat dinner as often as every other week.  Also, for a long period, Friday nights were pizza nights.  The only problem with this dinner was that we all liked different pizza places, however we would always come to a middle ground or take turns every other week.  Regardless of what was for dinner, it was always something to look forward to as I was growing up.

Then I went away to college, this was when that all changed.  No longer was I coming home or downstairs to my moms home cooked meals, but I was going to the caf to have, well I never really knew, whatever it was that they put on the menu that night.  I dreaded the caf and the strange food they offered at dinner time.  Breakfast wasn’t so bad, I was able to have a bagel or cereal and lunch I would make a sandwich, but dinner, dinner was not a time I enjoyed there.  The hot meals they offered always made me cringe because I really didn’t know what meat was being served or how long some of the food had been out for, and then there was the day that I found a bone in my chicken strip and decided to call it quits after that and made sandwiches for lunch and dinner the rest of the year. 

When I finally left the dorms and moved into my own apartment I was excited to finally buy and cook for myself!  However I didn’t realize all that went into cooking a real meal and I ended up making a lot of pizza rolls my sophomore year, which wasn’t much better than the caf...  It took until the end of my junior year to finally start really cooking.  Sure I would make nice meals before when people were visiting and special occasions but never just for myself.

When I did start really cooking I realized how great it felt, not only to b able to eat and enjoy something I made, but to learn new ways to work with different foods, to find out new foods I never knew I liked and even things I never knew existed!  The best of all was the day I decided to attempt to cook my favorite meal from my favorite restaurant.  It was Cajun chicken tortellini.  I googled the recipe, mostly under assumption I would be buying some Cajun chicken and adding some Alfredo sauce with some seasoning.  I was wrong.  The whole recipe was from scratch and I didn’t even understand half of the directions.  I read through and found myself wondering, what the heck does ‘deglaze the pan with white wine’ even mean?!  I was determined to make this dinner though, so I went to the store with my recipe, along with many other questions and unknown ingredients, and searched for what I needed.  

It ended up taking me quite some time to cook this desired meal and I was afraid to try it when it was served up, but to my surprise it turned out perfect, better actually.  The meal I made was more delicious than when I order it at the restaurant.  I don’t know if this is because I made something I didn’t think I could and it turned out or if it’s because the of the extra kick of Cajun I used while blackening the chicken... Either way this disastrous preparation of an amazing meal gave me a whole new outlook on cooking and now I make dinners for myself and my roommate almost every night and get to look forward to them like I used to when I was younger!