I just finished dining on a delightful bowl of sweet peas. There was no special sauce or seasoning used to jazz them up, just a bit of salt. I know that this must sound extremely exciting but I have to tell you they tasted great. The truth is that I dined on peas because I am impatient. Most of us are these days. After all, we live in the age of instant gratification.

The story behind the peas is that they started out to be the accompaniment to another dish. A dish that is not really any grander than the peas. I decided to heat up a frozen burrito for lunch and while I was rummaging around in the freezer I stumbled upon a half a bag of frozen peas. Months ago I had used the first half as the vegetable side for some long forgotten main dish and they were hiding behind a whole bag of frozen collard greens. When I found them I thought about how long they must have been in there and that I should probably just throw them out. Then I stopped and thought, “Why waste them?” So I didn’t

I threw them in a pan with a little water and set the burner to the highest setting. Then I opened the frozen burrito. The instructions on the burrito said to cook it for a minute and a half on each side and then let it sit for another minute. Because my microwave is a fairly low powered one, I usually heat things a little longer to make sure they get thoroughly warmed. I gave it two minutes on each side and then pulled it out to eat.

You see, I could not wait for the minute it was supposed to sit. I was hungry, OK? Besides it was going to be more than a minute before I even got a quarter of the way through it so at least most of it would have sat the appropriate time.

I came very close to burning myself as I tried to choke it down. I’m not sure if I learned this lesson. I guess we will know the next time I eat one. Slow Down Bob. OK. I think I get it.

When it was finished I started to check my email and the stock market (I’m addicted to that and I have no idea why, since I don’t have a dime in it) and of course CNN. CNN is where I go first on the computer and I probably look into what it has to report at least 20 or 25 times a day. I know, I know, that is not really necessary but the truth is that the internet has become almost as bad for me as television is to others. All day long the TV set never gets turned on as I poke around the house and my computer but CNN has become a bit of a problem for me. I need to take a news break and walk away every so often and I did that just a few months ago while my wife and I went on the cruise. I still can’t get over how smoothly things went in the world without me checking in on it.

So…the next thing I notice is that the water is boiling over on the stove where my forgotten pan of peas is cooking. Actually cooking is a little too grandiose. I was heating them up and they were more than ready to eat. Since my burrito was long gone I decided that I would not waste them. Peas are supposed to be really good for us, right?

If I was a sensible person I would have waited a couple of minutes after the burrito was done heating and then eaten it with the nice warm peas, but we all know how that goes.

The best place to watch impatience in action, and I think action is what all impatient people are striving for, is an intersection where there are traffic signal buttons on all four corners and a lot of cars all of the time. My wife and I have been watching several of these intersections ever since we got to the big city and have discovered a wonderful new sport with which to amuse ourselves. We love to watch pedestrians waiting for the light to change. We love to watch them slapping, hitting, punching and sometimes even kicking the buttons that are supposed to make the light change so you can cross the street. Some folks give it the one push and others slap it repeatedly until something actually happens and a very small amount just lean on the darn thing.

I have been trying to get some pictures of this behavior but am somewhat hesitant to point the camera at these poor souls who seem to think that what they are doing is actually changing anything in their world. Why do I say that? Well think about it a minute.

If the traffic is steady at the intersection then a pattern has been programmed into the lights so that they change at regular intervals and in a repeated pattern. That way every direction gets the same amount of time to move and things are regulated without one street or direction getting backed up further and further. They have to be equal.

So along comes John Q. Public and he is in a hurry so he uses the button to get things rolling so he can cross the intersection and get on with his important business. Does anyone out there believe that the system is set up so that when one guy is in a hurry he can alter the pattern and get going? In other words change the regular schedule of the traffic and risk backing up one street perhaps far enough to mess up another intersection. This does not seem very likely to me. Besides, what about the other three corners of the intersection? They usually have at least one person who is trying to do the same thing as our original subject. It just doesn’t make sense to me, but then again, perhaps someone out there can explain my error in thinking here.

Computers keep getting faster and new technological tools/toys keep coming on the market to speed up our ability to find out what we want/need to know and to save time so we will have more time to get more done so that we can run and run and run and run and run and anyway, why should I have to wait for my burrito to heat up? I guess I should just eat it frozen.

A friend of ours, Katy, turned me on to a simple bread recipe several months ago and I finally got around to trying it. It is called No Knead Bread and apparently is all over the internet although it was all new to me. It is really simple and the bread turned out great. You start with 6 ½ cups of flour, 1 ½ Tablespoons of salt, 1 ½ Tablespoons of yeast and 3 cups of water. Mix the salt and yeast in the lukewarm water and then stir in the flour. Now here is the hard part, you have to set it aside and let it rise for a couple of hours. Great. More waiting.

After the wait you dump it on a floured surface and roll it enough to get the surface dry. Then you split it into four equal pieces and cook it on cornmeal dusted baking pan in an oven that has been preheated to 400 degrees. The recipe says to bake it about 30 minutes.

When I first made it the bread came out great but I can seldom leave well enough alone so I started fooling around with it and had a little bit of luck. I used two bottles of warm beer instead of the water and I substituted whole wheat and rye flour for the white. I am lucky enough to own a baking stone so I baked them on that and since my oven seems a little cold to me, I increased the baking time by five or ten minutes.

I almost forgot, the original recipe says to throw a cup of water in the bottom of the oven just before you shut the door. This helps create a nice crust on the bread. I usually put a jelly roll pan in the bottom shelf right below the stone and pour the water in that.

I intend to keep messing with this recipe. It is basic and you can try to do lots of strange things with it if you have the courage and ingredients. For instance, why not used Coca Cola instead of water and why not add raisins? Or you could make part of the liquid you use be molasses or honey. I wonder what orange juice would do to it. I think you catch my drift.

Waiting for the bread to rise is really not all that terrible for me. You can actually refrigerate the dough and use it up to two weeks. Just pull it out and let it warm up for 45 minute to an hour. Sometimes when it’s rising I forget about it and get involved in something else. I know this will surprise you but don’t forget about my burrito and peas. I am easily distracted.

The other thing I do which is different than what the original recipe calls for is that I do knead it some. I can see why people might not want to take the time to do that but I believe it makes the bread lighter. I pound it and push it in some white flour until it doesn’t stick to my hands and then form it into little loaves that I like to let rise for at least a little while longer. The last batch I made was springy and soft on the inside and had a nice crust on the outside.

The point is that you can take the original directions and you can have some control over what you do with it and how it turns out.

I wonder if the whole traffic light button myth is not there to serve some sort of purpose that I have never considered before. Maybe someone decided that people needed some sort of fantasy about controlling their destiny. Maybe when large groups of people stand at an intersection and are in a hurry to cross it drives them nuts to have to wait. It could just be that if they feel as though the light is not changing fast enough, they get a little squirrelly and take matters in their own hands. It could be that having the buttons there makes them feel just close enough to having some control over their lives that it acts to suppress their inner rage at having to wait for the light to change. I know that the way some of them slap the button they must believe that it doesn’t always respond right away and that by repeatedly pushing it they are going to make it finally take, so to speak. If nothing else it gives them something to do with their hands other than strangling their fellow pedestrians.

We can control some things like the ingredients of our bread, but we must be patient with others. The lights will change in time and if you are feeling extremely frustrated over that wait then do something about it. Stand up for yourself and walk over to the pole and push the damn button. What matter that the guy catty corner from you is leaning on his. Sometimes if you pop the thing just right you can beat out that other guy. Am I right here? Can I get an Amen?

In my wife’s family there is a legendary meat loaf recipe that is loved by all.

I tell the story of this meat loaf all the time and to those who have heard it, I apologize for putting you through it once again.

The meat loaf that Grandma Murphy made was wonderful. All who ate it loved it and when her daughter made it, which is where I encountered it, it was delicious as well. A good meat loaf is comforting and is what real home cooking’s all about. There was one problem however. Grandma Murphy’s daughter is my wife’s mother. That is to say, she is my mother-in-law.

Now before you let your mind run wild and start on down some misguided path about my relationship with my mother-in-law let me set the record straight. I have always gotten along very well with her and in fact think of her as my second mother. She has been a positive voice in my corner for years and I love her dearly. So much for all of those stupid stereotypes.

I have enjoyed her cooking for years and have never eaten anything she has prepared that was less then very good. But every time she made the meat loaf she used to comment upon hearing the compliments from the family that while it was very good, it was not as good as Grandma Murphy used to make.

Now I never ate Grandma Murphy’s meat loaf. I have eaten the recipe prepared by others but I never ate it when it was prepared by Grandma Murphy herself, so I cannot say for sure that my mother-in-law’s meat loaf was really up to her mother’s standards or not. I can assure you though, that it was excellent. I always thought it was great and I always told her so.

When my wife and I got married she inherited the meat loaf recipe that was made by Grandma Murphy and used by her mother and it became part of our cooking repertoire. Of course when my wife made it, she always said that although it was very good, it was not really quite as good as her mother’s, which of course was not quite as good as Grandma Murphy’s. I think you can see the problem here.

Grandma made it great. Her daughter made it very well but not quite as good as her mother and my wife was making it very good as well but just not quite up to the standards of her mother’s effort which fell short of Grandma Murphy’s.

At this point I started referring to the recipe as the deteriorating meat loaf. I predicted that by the time my children made it, we would probably not be able to choke it down.

This is of course absurd. Our memories of food we have eaten in the past are fragile. Our respect for those who went before us and set standards that we long to live up to can be just as fragile.

I believe in standards and I respect ideals but I like to think I am a realist as well as a student of history and therefore I am a skeptic. Perhaps I am everything. Perhaps I am nothing. Perhaps I am hungry and want to make some meat loaf.

I made up my mind that I was going to completely skip over all of the history and instructions that my family left me and just go my own way. I would make a meat loaf that was mine. I would re-invent the wheel if necessary but I would stand or fall on my own. I pulled out some of my many cookbooks and I strolled through some of the thousands of meat loaf recipes available on the internet and put my mind in a meat loaf mode.

Imagine if you can my brain as an uncooked meat loaf.

The similarities are a little bit frightening.

I also recalled the many meat loaves I had seen my mother construct as well as the meat loaves of my mother-in-law and my wife. There are a few basics that one should have in all meat loaves and let’s begin with them.

We need some ground beef. OK.

We need something to bind this meat together, perhaps some bread crumbs and an egg or two. This all sounds right.

What about flavorings? Obviously salt and pepper will be needed and perhaps some oregano and parsley as well.

When I am cooking and not sticking particularly close to a recipe I like to think of myself as a “jazz” cook. If I ever write a cookbook someday I will call it Jazz Cooking.

I developed a taste for jazz music as part of my midlife crisis. When I was about 35 or 40 I started watching a lot of baseball and listening to jazz music. Some guys buy convertibles and chase younger women, but I went down a different road. Sports cars and younger women sounded like a great idea at the time, but there was one problem.

My wife said no.

She just made it very clear that these were not acceptable hobbies. What can I say? When she says no, I have learned not to argue. Besides, I really love my wife and I wouldn’t want to lose her for anything. Oh well, I guess I’ll turn on the Cubs game and listen to a little Miles Davis.

One of the things that I really love about jazz is the improvisation. In jazz music a chord pattern is written and perhaps a simple melody to go with it and then at different intervals or sometimes together, the individual musicians just make up stuff to go along with it. It is improvisation and it can be either really good or in some cases very bad. You have got to listen to different things and find what you like. The Grateful Dead played with basically the same notion. They helped bring the improvisational adventures of jazz to the rock music world. Sometimes the results were heavenly and sometimes not quite so much. At least it was better than a repetition of the same old thing every time. Music like this takes chances and that’s how great things are accomplished.

When I am doing “jazz cooking” I am not measuring the ingredients. I am using a little of this and a little of that. I react to what the dish looks and smells like as I go and I make adjustments based on those results. Sometimes I have big failures. Sometimes it all works out alright and sometimes I make something that I’m quite proud of.

When I make meat loaf I know that I will want 2 or 3 pounds of ground beef and two or three Italian sausages. I have to have some onions, salt and pepper and I also like a can of drained diced tomatoes. I always have bread crumbs on hand and a couple eggs. I also use a few spices but there are not really any secret ingredients. One thing I like to use that is probably not always used by everyone is crimini mushrooms. I buy about a handful of fresh ones and chop them up very fine so that you cannot really identify them in the loaf. It’s not to hide them. I just think they add a nice flavor and are not intrusive when they are chopped so fine. If it was really a secret ingredient I guess I wouldn’t be sharing it now, but then again, it’s not like the whole world is reading this.

I have a few of these items scribbled on a piece of paper I usually take out when I make my meat loaf but I think I could probably put it together without the notes.

I guess I would like to think that maybe someday my children or grandchildren will come across these scribbled notes and set about making their own meatloaf. Of course, it won’t be as good as what Dad used to make but what can you expect?

Part of my outlook on life involves making mistakes. My friends and family have heard me say over and over again that if you “show me someone who isn’t making any mistakes, I will show you someone who isn’t doing anything at all”. Life is about education and the way that we humans learn the best is by making mistakes and then making adjustments. Every day is a lesson and the good news for us simple humans is that if we do not learn the lesson of the day, we will undoubtedly get a chance to go through the lesson again. Some of us spend our whole life going over the same lesson day after day and not figuring it out. I know there are some lessons that I seem to be having trouble learning. Life keeps giving me the lesson and I guess it will continue until I learn what I am supposed to and can move one.

Take some chances. If your meat loaf turns out crappy, just throw it away and make it differently the next time.

And keep listening to new music. You will undoubtedly find a lot of sounds that you do not enjoy, but eventually you will find something new and wonderful and your life will be just a little bit richer.