I started the day by saying the we had to go out for lunch because I had had enough of cooking!
It seems that I have been making three meals a day for the last month. This includes regular meals as well as new recipes, which may or may not have been part of the meal plan for the day. And when there is a new recipe involved, there is always more work.
The photo shoot…
The more work, over and above the recipe preparation and cooking, is setting up for the instruction photos for new recipes. In all cases, this is a setting in my kitchen with different lighting for cooktop shots and totally different lighting for the counter top shots. It is a challenge to work with artificial lighting, especially on dark gloomy days, because I do not get any help from my south facing windows. When it’s sunny, the light that comes in makes a real difference.
Then there is the main photo shoot that I publish for each recipe. The main photo has a different set of requirements altogether. Different lighting, the addition of backdrops, camera adjustments, tripod adjustements, creativity, etc, etc. Keeping in mind that whatever I set up has to be taken down and put back in storage places to convert back to living space. It all takes time and work. I unfortunately do not have a studio, oh I wish.
The limit…
I guess I had reached the limit. I just wanted someone to put some food in front of me, and then take the dishes away when I was finished. No prepping, no cooking, no clean-up and no requirement to be creative.
Sunday lunch out?
But, as the morning wore on and I got busy with other household chores, the thought of lunch out on Sunday became less appealing. It seems that most restaurants serve brunch menus almost exclusively nowadays. Now, if we were in the UK, Sunday lunch would have been a different topic altogether. But, in Toronto, I did not feel like bacon and eggs or waffles or pancakes. Then I realized that we could make lunch at home, and almost more importantly, this was a lunch my husband often makes, so I announced, no lunch out, how about dinner out instead?
Sunday dinner out?
Again, as the day wore on and we got caught up in our normal daily routine, I started to think about where I wanted to have dinner. As the dinner hour approached, I once again became less than enthusiastic about the prospect of dinner out on a rainy Sunday night Toronto. Besides, Sunday is football day, we had Tampa Bay in the afternoon and were looking at Buffalo for the evening game. And after all, I could make a perfectly good dinner at home in less than a half hour.
So, once again I cooked. I thought just a steak and French fries. And oh, what the heck, some red onion jam. It will only take five minutes to prepare and it will cook itself.
I went from, I have to go out! To I’m happy at home after all, on this Sunday night.
