Every once in a while I get an email from a #cook90 naysayer. "I have joined your challenge, although 'challenge' is a misnomer," one recent email read. "Surprise! There are many of us that routinely cook three meals a day."
"Surprise" isn't necessarily how I'd classify my reaction to these emails. I don't doubt that there are plenty of home cooks in the world who have essentially been doing #cook90 since they were old enough to work the stove. And I can see how a bunch of people—you and me—making a big deal out of cooking three times a day could be boggling. To those thrice-daily cooks, there's no reason to make a fuss.
But this assumes that #cook90 is all about hitting a number. That's fair enough, considering the number is, uh, built into the name. But today—the penultimate day of my second annual #cook90—I found myself about the real motivation behind all this. Cooking 90 meals isn't really the point.
The point is to become a better cook. A more deliberate cook. A more curious cook. A more nimble and well-rounded cook.
I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but at the beginning of this month, I couldn't tell you how to hack together a Thai curry—it was a big, hulking blind spot in my repertoire. Today, after making a few curries (some with homemade pastes, some with store-bought—homemade wins, in case you're wondering), I no longer feel intimidated. In fact, the next time I make chicken khao soi, I'm going to double the chiles. (Stop me if this is a bad idea.)
That's one of the more tangible ways that #cook90 has changed my cooking. But there are more ways: I'm better at writing a weeknight dinner party menu (the trick is this), and I'm a calmer multi-tasker during my Sunday #nextover sessions. There are hundreds more tiny, less tangible changes that have happened to my cooking, too. And to anybody's cooking if they've done #cook90. A person can't cook every day for an entire month and not be better at it than when they started.
The proof is in the posts. This month I've watched @hoganjh turned out gorgeous salads almost every day, @mariannemcewen cook broccoli for breakfast, @thelaughingdoor roast lemons alongside her chicken, @allergicgirlnyc make her own ice cream and—overachiever alert—top it with homemade jam. I've received messages from cooks who say #cook90 has "changed their relationship" with cooking (in a good way!), taught them how to love leftovers, and convinced them that they never, ever have to buy a $12 bag of granola again.
Cooking three meals a day was harder for some of us than others. But none of us—not even those who have cooked this way for decades—find it 100 percent easy. To #cook90 this year, we had to reset our social lives, switch up our grocery game, and set our alarms a little earlier so we could wake up and make breakfast. We had to push through the real-life distractions that are always there to impede our cooking efforts. Those distractions aren't going anywhere, and when #cook90 is over we'll all be free to give in to them a little more. But thanks to our marathon month in the kitchen, we'll also have the skills to tackle distraction, and keep on cooking anyway.
