I Cook? Again?

After a month and a half of hitting the kitchen like I hit the weights, with an open palm, because, let's face it, if you hit the weights with a closed fist you'll break your hand, I took a brief hiatus from the hot plate in favor of someone else's cooking. For about two weeks now, I have been bouncing around from restaurant to restaurant, avoiding the act of preparing my own meals like someone who's fallen off the horse. But, I had Chinese food a few nights ago and the subsequent morning got sick directly in front of my departing guest, Mary Kate the Actress, who came to Rome after I visited her in London. I gave her quite a send off, with fireworks and everything.

So I've decided, especially in the light of my remaining funds, to recommit myself to the culinary arts. In fact, I've so recommitted myself that I'm going to go ahead and throw all of the suppositions and standards of cooking out the window and create something that truly reflects who I am. I won't be held by petty traditions. I will make meat sauce.

Meat sauce is about the only thing I haven't touched, and thus mangled beyond edibility. I have sauted mushrooms into peanuts, I have cooked fish into chips, I have swung three times at alfredo sauce and struck out. So I thought, why not screw up the meat sauce part, too.

Pretty much all you need, I was told, is a block of hamburger stuffs and possibly some spices. Put the hamburger in a pan and the pan on a hot plate for however long your heart tells you, then add those various spices, just like Emeril. Then probably some sauce.

Did you know that the grease that comes from meat hardens, real fast? DO NOT pour it down your drain. It is known to cause problems.