I Just Made This

I just made this for lunch with leftover ricotta cheese, spinach, and grass-fed ground buffalo. It was delicious, took hardly any time at all and made me smile.

When I make a meal from scratch, I feel different when I eat it than if I throw some pre-packaged meal into the microwave, which I do more often than I would like to. There's just something about the thought, love and preparation that goes into creating a new meal. You know how when you're hungry and you grab something as fast as you can and stuff it in your mouth wanting to calm the tummy beast, and by the time you're done (like 8 seconds later) you don't feel so good? I know when I behave this way I don't quite remember any joy in the consumption of the food.

When you put thought into what you're going to eat, that's part of the culinary experience. When you take ingredients out of the refrigerator with intention, that's part of the culinary experience. When you boil the water, heat the pan, chop the shallots, measure the butter, swirl the oil, slice the tomatoes, grate the cheese... these are all part of the culinary experience. Do you see where I'm going with this? The eating process starts the moment you begin thinking about what you're going to eat. If it's a matter of thinking about opening the fridge and getting a piece of cheese in your mouth before the door is even shut, your eating process lasted about 17 seconds, depending on how fast you chew. But if you make even a grilled cheese sandwich on the stove instead, you've prolonged the expeirence, smelled the aroma of melting butter, pan-toasted your bread, placed your cheddar, smelled the melting cheese, maybe decided to add a tomato... this is part of the process. you've stretched a 17 second experience into a 15 minute experience, and then you'll probably take more time to eat it since you made it. The fact that it's something you created, and the fact that it's delicious, makes the experience complete. And that feels (and tastes) real good.