My New Love

The stay at home dad life that I lead has allowed me to pursue the things that have haunted me throughout my adult years. I will never tell you that this is an easy job, but it is the only one that I have worked in which I get a couple of hours every day to do whatever I want. I just had a thought. Before I delve into the perks of my life, I should do a semi-accurate calculation of how much free time I actually have during the week.

Naps: 2.5 hours per day (usually)
Dad’s Day Out: 4 hours two times weekly
Total: 16.5 hours

Hmm, that’s even more than I realized. Now I feel guilty

Cleaning: -1 hour per day
Getting up at night: -.5 hours per day
Getting back to sleep at night: -.5 hours per day (I'm getting old)
New Total: 6.5 hours

There, that’s better.

Well, in those 6.5 hours that I have every week, I get the chance to right some wrongs. I will tell them to you in order of importance. Number one, writing. I have wanted to be a writer since high school and for a variety of reasons (fear, my family, and immaturity, to name a few) never tested the water. Number two, golf. I was wronged as a child. The only golfer I knew was my Uncle Joe, and he was so nerdy (think yellow polo, bright green v-neck sweater and crisp khakis on the course) that I wouldn’t have been caught dead hitting golf balls. Of course, after writing the previous sentence I now want to go and buy that outfit. The point though, is that due to my late start, I have a self taught swing that is somewhat nice to look at, and utterly worthless.

Now, the last long lost love of my youth is cooking. As my mother will attest, before writing and golf, there was the kitchen. I loved to cook as a kid and there are embarrassing pictures of me making meatballs as an eight year old to prove it. In high school I used to tell my friends that I would have my own cooking show. It would one day geniously combine two things I loved, cooking and mooning people (please don’t ask). It would of course be called The Full Moon Chef. To this day I feel that the Naked Chef must have been some eavesdropping classmate of mine that I don’t remember.

I seem to be getting off topic again. Last night I was in the mood to actually cook, as opposed to mindlessly throwing together something I’ve made countless times before. Every family gets into these cooking ruts; as kids there was a London broil or baked chicken every week. Don’t worry Mom, I still love both. So last night I borrowed a recipe from one of my wife’s favorite blogs and tore up the kitchen. I will let the recipe speak for itself, but let’s just say that chiffonading basil really is fun and that I do realize heavy cream does not jive with my new diet.