I always have preferred instantaneous, black-and-white feedback; confirmation that my efforts have enjoyed absolute success or utter failure; noteworthy victory or crushing defeat. In middle and high school, grades proved far too important, and long-distance running perfectly satisfied my demands for a concrete, objective and immediate evaluation of my abilities: My race, performance and months of training could be economically summarized with a mere two or three numbers. Times, reduced to figures like six-fourteen or sub-twenty-two, induced either sleepless nights and feelings of inadequacy or relieved waves of elation. Inevitably, cooking - what began as a purely recreational, whimsical hobby, a release from more demanding tasks - morphed into yet another yardstick to determine tangibly my contributions or wasteful fumbles to society.
The lure of the possibilities embedded within a basic kitchen and few simple ingredients enticed me at an early age, and I quickly expanded my repertoire of recipes from cakes concocted of packed wet sand and seashells to edible treats like homemade freezer pops of frozen orange juice or cookie sandwiches formed with Chips Ahoy! miniatures and vanilla ice cream. My poor parents patiently endured several questionable experimentations on my part (I remember one "recipe" involving some of my favorite foods as a 5-year-old: peanut butter cookies doused with Mondo grape drink, placed in the toaster oven for several minutes). Soon, however, I grew restless with what I considered to be amateur or childish menu suggestions and looked to my mother's cookbooks for inspiration.
The concepts "slow" and "gradual" never quite registered with me, and I approached baking and cooking as I did all other things - with initial overenthusiastic fervor and na
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