Watching The Chew brings up memories.

My wife took today off of work two things to get ready for our sons wedding this weekend. So she had the TV on a different channel than I am used to. I watched The Chew. I'm not sure I've ever watched the show before but they had a commercial on for canned tomatoes. I had one of those cascading flashbacks to when I used to be able to cook. One of my favorite things to make was chili and I used the diced tomatoes that were shown in the commercial. It made me really miss cooking. I'm not sure I ever made chili the same way twice. I would usually use a packet of premade spice and then dress it up with things like cayenne and other spices. I usually use hamburger as a meat but sometimes would use smoked pork loin. The smoke meat was always the best. I would usually use chili beans but would often and in other types like kidney beans, pinto, black or garbanzo. Chili was always my favorite.
Another favorite meal I would make would be a chicken sausage based rigatoni. They have some flavored chicken sausages on the market now that are very tasty. I would cut them diagonally and then sauté them with onions in olive oil. Sometimes I would add tomato. Then I would cook the rigatoni noodles and after draining them will would add a liberal amount of butter and when it melted I would stirred in. Then I added the sautéed sausages to a better rigatoni and then add a liberal amount of Parmesan cheese or a grated cheese blend. The butter on the noodles would hold the grated cheese. I really love this dish, it was pretty simple. Of course I like both chili and my rigatoni more than my wife did but she did appreciate not having to cook.
I used to bike, jog, kayak and years ago trout fish. I don't really miss biking very much or jogging because they were a lot of work and done mostly for exercise. I can close my eyes and am transported by daydreaming to kayaking and or trout fishing. I don't miss these two activities is much because I could relive them in my memory. Cooking is not that way though, I really miss it!