Some time ago, I resolved to learn how to make challah bread. I'm not Jewish, of course, but if challah weren't available for sale to Gentiles on Saturday mornings at Great Harvest, I might consider converting. But when stripped from its religious significance (which I am largely ignorant of), there seems no point to me of having challah only on the Jewish Sabbath. I should be able to have it on a Tuesday if I want, I told myself.

So I looked up a recipe on the Internet and went to work, pulling it all together from the yeast to the honey. My challah was passable. A little more burned on the bottom than Great Harvest's, but when I fed it to other people, they praised my work. I was proud of myself. Yet I resolved never to make challah again.

It happened again last night. I wanted to impress Shelly and celebrate the fact that she was borrowing a TV from a co-worker so we could watch the Olympics (are we pathetic or what?), so I put it into my head to make onion rings (get it? RINGS!) and "Golden" gourmet baked macaroni and cheese. I pulled the onion rings recipe off the Net, and the pasta recipe out of a cookbook. I have resolved to never again make that mac and cheese dish, yummy though it was. Maybe the onion rings, but probably not.

I'm disillusioned with cooking because it seems to me that there are so many inexpensive alternatives to cooking your own food. Great Harvest's challah costs about the same as the ingredients for homemade challah, and I don't have to spend the entire day rising and punching and rising and punching and sifting and twisting and baking. The ingredients for my gourmet mac and cheese were definitely quite a lot more expensive than one of those Lipton Pasta Sides packets that you can whip up in 15 minutes for $1.50. And it tasted almost identical. Actually, the $1.50 packet was probably a bit better. Onion rings are a little harder to come by, so they might be worth the effort, but it was still a lot of effort. The whole process took about an hour and a half for a plateful of rings.

So I have a weird relationship with cooking. In general, I like it. It gives me a sense of accomplishment to whip something up from scratch. I consider myself somewhat of a creative person, and cooking is a form of creation. But although it's trendy to bemoan the pre-processed food mania sweeping the nation, it's hard to fault those of us who would rather do something more constructive with our time. And I'm just not convinced that making your food from ingredients saves money. I know it didn't in these instances.