Hello internet, Kelly here… I’d like to tell you a story.
This is a story about switching places. Kind of like those cheesy Disney movies like “Freaky Friday” and “It’s a Girl Boy Thing” where the main characters find themselves magically transformed into the body of a person that they do not understand very well. According to the prescribed Disney movie formula, the characters are then forced to live life in the other person’s shoes for awhile, overcoming obstacles and preconceptions until they learn some valuable life lessons. They then return to their own shoes with a broader view of the world and strengthened relationships. Awwwww….
Ok, our story isn’t quite as magical, but Gudrun and I did find ourselves suddenly (and unintentionally) waking up in each other’s hobbies. This blog will tell the story of Gudrun’s exploration of photography (one of my hobbies), and my journey into the culinary arts (Gudrun’s specialty). To understand the hobby switcheroo, I guess I should probably tell you something about us if you don’t know us already (I’m not expecting anyone other than our immediate family and friends to read this, but hey, you never know….).
I have never been a cook. I survived university on pre-packaged pre-baked tofu, no-cook burritos* (which are, however, surprisingly delicious), and take out. Occasionally I cleaned enough cat hair off the stove to cook something, but it was usually just pasta with canned sauce. I guess it isn’t that I can’t cook, but rather that I had a ton of other things that I would rather be doing. Things like yoga, volunteer work, and photography.
Speaking of photography, my experience with cameras started in middle school when my dad started giving me lessons on my Grandfather’s old Nikon F-1. It was a good education. Since the F-1 was fully manual (didn’t even have a working built-in light meter!) I quickly learned the mechanics of taking pictures. I learned about the methods and techniques and soon I graduated to developing my own film and prints. I took some photography lessons and I signed up to take pictures for the school newspaper and yearbook. In college, I bought my very first camera, a Canon AE-1… It was also fully manual, but had the added luxury of a built in light meter (the thing that measures the amount of light in a setting and helps one determine what camera settings to use on a manual camera). I continued taking pictures, and I have albums full of black and white photos of my university experience. The problem was, I was never really “artistic.” I can take a technically good photograph, but they are normally pretty boring.
Once I moved to Belgium, and lost access to a darkroom, and the price of film doubled and the price of developing increased by a few hundred percent (from pennies for self developing to about 30 Euros a roll), the cost of photography quickly became prohibitive. I found myself questioning whether each frame was “worth it” or not, and that took a whole lot of the fun away from photography.
Skip ahead to a couple months ago when I finally decided that I would go digital. Despite my romantic feelings toward film, and the nagging sensation that I was cheating on “real” photography, I finally broke down and bought a Canon T1i (or 500D if you live in Europe). Cue the romantic slow-motion “falling in love” movie montage. The camera is amazing. If I could marry it, I would. I am kicking myself for holding out this long… I just LOVE it!! It is so…………………… hey Gudrun, give me back my camera!!!
Speaking of Gudrun, one of her passions is cooking. She’s a professional cook (chef de partie) in a hotel restaurant, but that isn’t really the end of the story. Her job bores her because she has to follow orders and recipes. Her true passion comes out at home in the kitchen – whether it is experimenting with Indian-Mexican fusion (ok, that one didn’t work out so well), or making awesome kiwi sorbet on the first try, she is always trying something new. She is a very experimental cook, and while her bookshelf is full of cookbooks, most of her creations come out of her own imagination.
She learned to cook when she was 12 years old. At the time, her simple goal was being able to help her overworked Mom. Her first dish was carrots cooked with onions and sugar… a typical Belgian side dish. Her Mom taught her many more traditional Belgian dishes along the way, like steak with fries and pancakes (in the US, we would call them crêpes).
These days, while she still likes the Belgian standards, she is more interested in branching out - she is especially fascinated by foreign fare and finding ways to make “traditional” food healthier or more interesting. For instance, she’s planning the “aperitiefhapjes” or cocktail food for her family’s Christmas party this year, and the theme is “edible dishes” - she’s making little salads and so forth in cups and plates made of home-made baked bread or various vegetables. In my opinion, it is bound to be excellent (Note: at this point, due to her humility, I am supposed to apologize to Rita, Catherine, Joke, and the rest of Gudrun’s family for being the guinea pigs for this experiment).
I suppose the conclusion to this story is that she is a daring and experimental cook. She likes to try new things, and explore new territory. She is extremely shy and modest about her skills (which is why I am writing this blog). For instance, she is convinced that she is not good at making “sauces” (I disagree). Although not everything she makes turns out great, most of the time she is breaking new ground and learning a lot. Needless to say, I eat very well.
So… WHAT in the world would possess me to try to take over the kitchen from her? It must be insanity!! In the next post, find out why in world I would want to kick my own personal chef out of the kitchen (I don’t have time to explain now, I have a roasted red pepper sauce on the stove)…. In the next post, you will also find out how Gudrun managed to steal my camera from me, and how she shows way more artistic skill than I ever could dream of having.
After we finish up the introductory stories, we’ll jump right in to all the hobby stuff. I’ll be posting my recipes (with Gudrun’s critiques), and we’ll be posting her pictures. Sometimes our hobbies will even intersect (she’s taking pictures of me cooking tonight in my pyjamas)… we don’t promise that everything will be perfect, but we do promise to have a sense of humor about our learning curves.
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