Using your Imagination

Here at my school, we have a kind of running joke about our cafeteria food. Don't get me wrong, the food is actually good - mostly home cooked and usually fairly healthy. We rarely have meals that no one likes.

Except on weekends.

On the weekends, we usually have three people running the kitchen. Breakfast is always cereal. Lunch is always cold cuts or PB&J, carrots, and chips. Dinner is always sloppy joe's, corndogs, soup, or some form of casserole. "Weekend food." That phrase has come to encompass anything we are sick of and don't ever want to see again. And for people like me, who believe that variety is the spice of life, there comes a point where you just can't eat weekend food anymore.

So, although I believe (theoretically) in regular meals and well-balanced diets, weekends are always up in the air around here. I usually sleep past breakfast and make do with tea, eat some turkey and cheese sometime in the early afternoon, and hunt around in the fridge sometime after 7:00 for something worth eating. And if nothing presents itself, I have a secret chocolate stash like every good college girl should. Don't judge.

But here's my secret, my private habit that really helps me get by when the chef in me confronts the PB&J in the cafeteria:

I daydream food.

Yes my friends, when I can't have that crab-and-grapefruit omelet I so long for, I dream it up in my head, in stunning detail. When corn dogs on a paper plate try to pass themselves off as dinner, I think ahead to the cold salmon with lemon-and-dill dressing I'm going to make when I get back to my favorite coastal city in two months.

Until then, I'll pretend that the "beach" at the lake is a real beach, that this springtime heat isn't nearly as humid as it really is, and that this peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a panini with all the fixings. Sometimes, it's good to give the imagination a workout.

newsflash

I decided something today.

I decided that I want to start a cooking blog. More than start - I want to actually MAINTAIN a cooking blog. You know, one of those adorable websites that you look at when you're supposed to be taking notes in your theology class? One of those websites with cute-and-clever names that make you want to hug the blogger because you know that, somehow, you must be long-lost relatives of some kind. One of those websites filled to the brim with recipes that combine flavors you never even thought of using together before, and so full of the most gorgeous photographs that just scrolling through makes you drool like a dog waiting for a treat?

Or is that just me?

Anyway, this is really a dream I've had for a long time. And it still remains a dream, because even though I've gotten enough motivation to dust off my own blog for the first time in *cringe* nearly (but not quite) a year, the facts of life remain. And these are said facts:

1. I live in a dorm. The implications of this are that I am a poor college student, and can't afford to buy food. At least not food worth writing about or taking pictures of.
2. Even if I were a rich college student instead of a poor one, the kitchens on my particular campus are not worth cooking in. And certainly not worth photographing anything in.
3. My dad has the good camera. In Washington. *sigh* Oh, Washington......

Well, back to the point. What I actually decided today was that, in lieu of realizing my food blog dreams just yet, I should at least start blogging again, and somehow prove to myself that my fingers have not fallen off and my ability to write coherent (and correctly-punctuated) sentences has not left me, never to be seen again. And so, here I am, capitalizing the first letters of my sentences, dreaming about food, and counting down the seven weeks left until I return to a real kitchen in a real house with real ingredients. And will have a job, which means real money.

And really, you don't need to cook food to write about it.....at least not all the time. Right?