One part flour one part sugar one part water, all the spices your little hands can reach when you climb up on the counter. Place in a tubberware from the corner cabinet, stir with a tarnished silver spoon and place lovingly in microwave, cook on high for two minutes until solidifies and air bubbles start to break the surface. Feed to adoring parents and sisters. Realize later that eating a goey microwaved glob of sugared and spiced flour is an act of selfless love.

I used to make microwave cakes. My older sister, when she asked me to be her maid of honor last year said that one of the requirements was that I make hundreds of microwave cakes for the reception, she was joking. No one liked the microwave cakes, I didn’t even like the microwave cakes, but there was something riveting about the method and the completion that kept me making more. Thank goodness a girl named Caitlin gave me an Anne of Green Gables cook book for my eigth birthday and I turned years of attention to Mrs. Ira’s Delicious Shortbread. That was a turning point. Then there was foccacia, made from the Denver Junior League cookbook. The foccacia stage was simultaneous with a food colouring stage. I turned my shortbread purple, I whipped cream into green butter and baked hot pink pound cake (also from Anne of Green Gables).
In middle school I went rogue again and gave up recipes entirely for stir fries, pasta sauce, soups and salads with homemade dressing. Some were good, some where terrible, but like the microwave cakes all enthralled me. Since the beginning I have had a special attahcment to “substitutions”, and no attachment to measuring instruments. The creative high of searching the refridgerator and cupboards for an “almost”, the satisfaction of throwing things in until it tastes “just right”, I live for those moments! Lately however, I am breaking out of the substitute everything and throw it together philosophy that served me so well in college. With a real job comes a real paycheck which delightfully leads to affording all the ingredients of a real recipe. And these real ingredients and real recipes have strangely taken a priority standing in my life, far above fancy drinks, happy hours, a professional wardrobe, fixing my camera and re-heeling my shoes.

But since this is the beginning, I think it is necessary to start at my beginning. The first concoction I ever created that turned out well was rosemary potatoes. My parents liked them so much they had me make them for our visiting relatives. I felt encouraged, I felt victorious. I was ten and I had finally cracked open the secret behind food, after years of slaving over microwave cakes and shortbread I had created something that was my own, and was delicious. Never mind that rosemary and potatoes are paired together often, at this point in my life the union was a brillant discovery, and I have always liked rosemary because of it.

Rosemary potatoes:

Wash and cut three russet potatoes in cubes
Add olive oil to a cast iron skillet and heat
Add potatoes
Sprinkly generously with salt, pepper and rosemary.
Cook until the potatoes are browned and crisp

Simple, easy, but oh what a difference this one concoction made.