That would be me. I am the Idiot Chef.

First, as a side note, I have so far hardly had a single on-topic (in the context of this blog) thing to say yet. Last was women and self-perception, now it's cooking. Not even anything important about cooking, really. Can I bring design into this at all? Music? ... Cars?

(and then I departed to eat my Idiot Cooking)

(... and, after eating, promptly forgot all about the draft I'd saved)

So I've returned, and I'm admittedly not thinking much about food. I really only started to write this because I was waiting for something like a gallon-and-a-half of water to reach a boil on my apartment-issue electric stove. You'd think in that time I'd have written a lot more (the water really did take its time), but, like I said, I didn't have much to say.

Here's the gist: I want to become a competent cook, an idiot chef. Chefs, you see, are a rung or two higher up the culinary ladder than cooks, so a bad chef and a competent cook can see about eye-to-eye. Idiot chefs get a slight advantage due to an assumedly better vocabulary.

Where do I stand now? I'm not an idiot cook, thankfully, but perhaps just a regular cook. I don't get butterflies when making meals, and fairly regularly attempt new dishes. These, fortunately for my roommate and I, are more often than not met with some degree of success. So maybe I'm a solid "pretty good cook."

Anyway, I want to become a bit better than that, and then plateau. I don't need to impress anybody with my cooking. I mean, so far as I can tell, just the fact that I'm a guy that has has actually made stromboli from scratch gets me some bonus points. I'm not even Italian! And I made stromboli!

Tangential mini-story: I did not have a rolling pin when I made that stromboli the first time, so I had to resort to the only thing around that was both cylindrical and structurally integral. What did I choose? A glass. Like, a drinking glass. I have never, ever been so careful doing something so basic as rolling in my entire life. If that glass broke, its pieces would have found a new home in my hands, and I use those for, you know, everything. I mean, I'm a designer, so I'm on the computer all day at work. I'm also a musician, so I rely solely upon them (and occasionally my feet, but that's beside the point) in my primary leisure-time activity. If I lost the use of my hands, I would be out of work and terribly bored, neither of which I'd consider acceptable baggage for a stromboli to carry.

But, in the end, the stromboli was alright. And, assuming you care at all, you'll be happy to know that a rolling pin was promptly added to my tiny cooking arsenal, at the same time as was a meat tenderizer which I have never used and probably never will. I like tough meat.

And now you know something trivial about me.