Reuniting with old loves

I love to cook and bake. I love to follow recipes, but also to create dishes out of ingredients I have on hand. In the years of Cecil's illness, there wasn't time or energy for the kind of cooking and baking I enjoy. It is wonderful reuniting with two of my first loves, cooking and baking.

The dish pictured has no name. I had mushrooms I had to cook or they would spoil. I had chicken cutlets, and a partial bag of frozen peas in the freezer.

I dusted the chicken cutlets with seasoned flour (salt, garlic powder, paprika) and sauteed in olive oil. I removed the chicken pieces and added the mushrooms. I cooked the mushrooms until they were soft, removed them, and then added flour to the juices in the pan. I browned the roux and removed it. I added the chicken, mushrooms, peas and chicken broth,and then added the roux a little at a time until I got the consistency I wanted. I knew it would thicken more as it cooked, so I wasn't nervous adding a cup of milk for creaminess. Parsley and more paprika, cook some penne, and it was delicious.

Since the beginning of this summer, I have cooked Maryland fried chicken three times, Chicken Marsala twice, Chicken Stroganoff once, meatloaf multiple times, made multiple pots of spaghetti sauce, made eggplant cutlets twice, cooked my dad's barbecued hamburgers multiple times, made multiple pots of different soups ( the chicken fajita soup was unbelievable), made stromboli using premade bread dough, and baked bread from yeast and flour (because I really want to make stromboli with my own dough).

When I am in the kitchen cooking, I'm happy. When I feed my family food I cooked, I am really happy. Last night, I was the only one enjoying the soup I made yesterday, but it made me happy that it turned out so well (no recipe, just thrown together soup). I know this is how I move on with my life. I give time to things I love. I celebrate the small things.

The empty space and the pain and the grief are always there. I just need to teach them to live in concert with hope and joy.