I enjoy cooking. I also like reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows on Food TV. While I do not watch them a lot, my favorite shows fall into two types: Italian cooking, particularly Mario Batali’s Molto Mario and Giada De Laurentiis’s Everyday Italian; and travel shows where the hosts combine visiting restaurants with a bit of travelogue, especially Al Roker’s Roker on the Road and Rachael Ray’s $40 A Day.

However, I rarely make fancy meals, but relatively simple stuff since I do not have hours to spend in the kitchen. Yesterday I barbecued chicken and made rice and mushrooms which was halfway between regular rice and risotto. Since my family is from Southern Italy, we do not make real risotto which is too creamy for our taste. Today I am making chili in the crockpot, since we will be out much of the day and I might not have time to make dinner when we get home.

I have frequent daydreams in which I imagine how I will be spending my life when I retire eventually (although school has been so pleasant so far this year–I know, I know, it’s only been 2 weeks!–that retirement is not something I am anticipating right now), and those daydreams include returning to college (if only in such programs as Elderhostel where retirees can take classes without the stress of grades and/or degree programs), learning a new language (probably Chinese since I started doing so on a pre-school level already), travel and see the world, write another dozen books or so (of course!), reading all the unread books in my collection (as well as rereading all the others) and really learning how to cook Italian food. I do not anticipate ever being bored so long as I am fit physically and mentally.