Is Cooking Cheap Therapy?

As someone who is often “on the go” I find that when I do manage to take the time to slow down, it’s difficult for me to relax.

When I’m watching TV, I like to knit to keep my hands busy, when I was in school I couldn’t study without the radio on, and I eat lunch desk side daily.

Laying on the beach? Forget it, not without a book or magazine.

When I’m laying on a massage table, I’m mentally making my grocery list.

Lying in bed at night, my mind is compiling my to-do list for when I get to the office the next morning.

In the shower? I’m planning when I’ll hit the gym the next day and whether or not I should bring my sneakers to work or come home to change afterwards.

The one place that I somehow manage to let my mind wander is the grocery store.

We all know I like to experiment in the kitchen.

I like learning about food, I like cooking it, and of course, I like eating it.

When I’m in the grocery store, I could wander the aisles for hours dreaming up ways I could make boxed cake mixes more creative or – wow – create my own recipes instead.

I like to mill through the produce department comparing the various fruits and vegetables and matchmaking salad combinations, even though my faithful salad standbys are red leaf lettuce, sliced cucumber and the freshest, reddest tomatoes available.

I like looking at all of the different flavors of pasta sauces and picture myself slaving over a similar homemade sauce (a romantic dinner for the perfect man, of course).

Of course, this isn’t the most time efficient hobby – I could just make a shopping list at home, get in and get out, and return home to my cozy kitchen so that I can actually prepare these dishes and eat my delicious inventions rather than stroll down the ethnic foods aisle thinking about it (not to mention the time I should be spending searching for aforementioned perfect man. But we’ll save that for another post).

But it’s not that easy.

Since I live right outside New York, in a much smaller city, my selection of grocery stores in walking distance is somewhat limited.

Because of this, I don’t get to do the “big shop” very often and when I do find myself with transportation in a beautiful, suburban mecca of a supermarket, I go a little buck wild.

However, that isn’t often so I’m usually forced to going to several different stores to get what I need for the week.

It’s not unusual for me to hit four different grocery stores four times over the course of a weekend. One store might not have the iced tea that I like – while another has better produce, more frozen yogurt flavors, and so on.

Though it might sound like a huge waste of time, I secretly enjoy browsing through the aisles, knocking my hand-held shopping basket into grocery carts by since I’m not paying attention to my surroundings while I’m surveying the 100-Calorie Pack shelf – which has grown considerably of late.

I think of the grocery store in such a way that some women my age might classify Saks Fifth Avenue or even H&M – it’s satisfying, it’s a great way to keep me entertained for an hour.

Have you ever heard of retail therapy? Instead of the mall, it’s the market where I can concentrate on my shopping list and nothing else, even when my purchases are sometimes made in vain.

I’ll be honest here – I have grandiose ideas, but after shopping furiously for pine nuts in February, I still haven’t made the Butternut Squash and Pine Nut Lasagna recipe that I’ve had my eye on.

When I bought macadamia nuts in April, I was sure I was going to bake White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies and bring them to work in a pretty springtime tin for our weekly Wednesday group meeting.

Never happened, though if any of my coworkers are reading this, I might have to now.

But the bottom line is that there’s still beef stew meat in my freezer from January, when I decided that it would be a great winter meal. Yep, folks, it’s August and the stovetop still hasn’t seen beef stew.

I am constantly pulling recipes from magazines and blogs that I can’t wait to try.

I stack them in the basket on top of my microwave, I jot down the seldom-used ingredients that I never seem to have in my fridge – capers, fresh parsley, pine nuts, Cream of Tartar – and they sit on my shelves while I make a turkey sandwich, which is the vanilla ice cream of dinner.

Plus, since I’m usually cooking for myself, how do I gather the motivation to make meals for one? Are there any recipes that you’ve been dying to try but just haven’t gotten around to it?

Please share, and maybe you’ll save me from more sandwiches.