A Shoemaker Without Shoes
In case you haven’t noticed, one of the things I enjoy the most is food and everything that’s relevant to it – cooking, baking, browsing new recipes, looking for new gadgets, or just talking about food.
I belong to several cooking groups on Facebook, all of them are exclusive closed groups full of professional chefs and just nutty foodies like me. One of the cooking groups is so “secret” you have to be invited in to join, so I guess I made the cut. 🙂
Those are the groups where nobody’s annoyed if you post what you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner with detailed step by step instructions and every single thing that you just scored at a food or gadget store. Have I mentioned we are crazy?
The sheer amount of different foods that each person in those groups makes is astonishing, especially considering that most of those dishes were made “just because ” and not due to somebody actually starving. But that’s how you know you’re a foodie – eating is optional, cooking is mandatory, just for the pure pleasure of it.
Think of this – 99% of recipes that I made (and some will appear here) and will be made are “just because ” since I’m now alone as the kid lives in a college dorm. Who’s going to eat it all is a completely irrelevant question, I usually deal with it after the fact, it’s all about the process and a joy of cooking!
The only question that remains is do we actually have a life?! Food IS life! No other way around it!
Yet one of the times when I actually do care to be waited on and catered to never really happens – on my birthday! Nobody ever wants to cook for me on my birthday, especially the birthday cake! Usually it’s the opposite: “What’s up girl? It’s your birthday! Whatcha cooking??” Suckers!
I can ask my mom to make appetizers sometimes, but nobody wants to go anywhere near my birthday cake. Yes, I get it, gluten free baking can be scary at first, but, common people, make me my damn birthday cake! It’s usually a no!
Yes, I could’ve ordered a gluten free cake from one of the many bakeries that now popped up all over the city, but, the thing is, I usually do not love them that much. For a gluten free bakery to be profitable, they need to cut the corners somewhere and use less that stellar baking mix (and in gluten free baking, the finer the flour mill, the more expensive it is), so cakes tend to be a bit gritty. And I’m all about foods being the best they can be, gluten free or not (ok, read -I’m obnoxious and OCD about every little detail), so I tend to like my cakes more than in any gluten free bakery I tried.
Yes, I know, the effing nerve of me!
Therefore, every November I’m stuck with making my own birthday cake! The ultimate shoemaker without shoes dilemma – but the other way around.
This was my birthday cake last year, a delicious almond-amaretto white cake, decorated with sugar and real flowers, in all the vibrant Fall colors.
And I got all the “likes” and cheers from super duper professional bakers in that exclusive cooking group. 🙂
So maybe this coming November I’ll ask one of them to make me a cake. But then again, I may happily remain a baker with all the birthday cake she wants to make herself!