“You tell nice stories, and sorry to hear about your mom.”

It’s been almost seven years now, so that didn’t really bother me until a couple hours later, as I was driving home, I realized how much I missed sharing stories with her. I fell into a funk.

It is said that Irma Rombauer wrote The Joy of Cooking to recover from her husband’s suicide. One sure way to crawl out of a funk is to cook something.

I pulled up MacGourmet, wrote down a few ingredients and stopped by Safeway:

Chicken Breast Dijon on a bed of Basmati Rice
Sunnyvale, California

Nikon D200, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G VR
1/10sec @ f/2.8, iso 100, 70mm (105mm)

I haven’t been cooking in forever. That’s one of the things you give up on when you date someone who is a vegetarian and you aren’t—after all, eating is a necessary component of cooking and that is an experience best shared.

It may seem strange that someone with no taste whatsoever would enjoy cooking so much, but I’ve loved it ever since I found out you can reduce a random soupy mixture into an amazing sauce (Sweet and Sour Mushroom Chicken from a old Korean cookbook I found in my mom’s kitchen). There is something amazingly soothing about putting together a bunch of stuff and making something that smells and tastes nice, even if you can barely smell and taste, even if doing so is just palliative.

This dish was the Chicken Breast Dijon a bed of Fragrant Basmati Rice. On the side I put some Bourbon Apples. I had forgotten to purchase butter so I dropped a slice of bacon on the frypan instead. I made too much Bourbon sauce for the amount of apples I was eating so that’s why they came out too dark and soft—still tasty like candy.

The orange juice was because I was going to go out later that night. I can’t legally drive for a while if I have even a single glass of wine. The right wine here would probably be a Reisling.

Chicken Breast Dijon on a bed of Basmati Rice (closeup)
Sunnyvale, California

Nikon D200, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G VR
Canon 500D diopter
7.1sec @ f/22, iso 100, 70mm (105mm)

The recipes come from some old editions of Cooking Light. If you like them, I really recommend buying the All-new Complete Cooking Light Cookbook (Cooking Light). Besides the usual Cooking Light recipe goodness, it is littered with cool cooking tips and the easiest to use cooking index ever.

Remember, all you have to do to cook is read and follow directions. If you aren’t baking, you don’t even have to be right!