Cooking: Skill Level…Oops is that a FIRE?!

I’ve always been envious of the talented chefs on the Food Network. I mean look at them, they can flawlessly prepare a meal that looks more like a work of art then something that should be set on a dinner table. The crazy thing is, they don’t even seem to break a sweat while doing it. I used to sit for hours watching them, Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray, they were at one time, my heroes. I thought to myself “I could cook like that.” But I was sadly mistaken. Cooking is not easy. They say it’s a labor of love, but I consider it a labor of insanity. You stand over something heated, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the individuals you’re preparing said meal for will be eternally grateful.

I will start with saying that I don’t really cook. My expertise extends to Ramen, bacon and Hamburger Helper. I have cooked enough hamburger helper in my 34 years on this earth to feed a third world country for the next thousand years. It wasn’t as if my Mom never taught me to cook, she did. I just didn’t care to put the effort into most of it. In high school when all of the girls took home economics and food service classes, I went the opposite direction and took wood shop and welding. I wasn’t at all interested in how to property assemble a salad bar. I know the basics of making a salad anyway…open bag, dump salad in bowl, pour on an entire bottle of ranch dressing. See? Easy peasy. I found that it was far more engaging learning how to fuse 2 pieces of metal together with a welding rod, and to nail things together. My bird houses and bird feeders were amazing by the way. I think I wanted to break the mold back then. The whole “women should be in the kitchen” thing was unnerving. Women could be anywhere they wanted, including accidentally welding metal to a bench that it shouldn’t have been. Okay so I wasn’t the best at the whole “Women can do anything” either.

Now that I’m married and have a family though, I kinda wish I’d put in the effort to learn how to cook. To be honest, I’m really surprised I haven’t killed anyone or given them a mad case of the back door trots with my cooking. Yeah I know there are tons of cookbooks that will teach me the art of this, but trust me, unless they have a magic spell in there, it ain’t happening. I tend to cause mayhem when I take on something like that. I’ve even managed to catch a cookbook on fire. Oops. I’ve been burned numerous times, dropped an entire lasagna on the floor and even forgot something in the oven until I looked in and couldn’t even recognize what it was I was cooking. Was it bread? Who knows. I think one of my biggest disasters was zuchinni bread though. I was so proud of how it smelled, looked, wow it was perfect really. Everyone was stoked to take a bite, and so was I. That is until I did. How does one forget the sugar? That was just one example of my kitchen chaos.

Kitchen appliances don’t care for me very much either. I’ve found myself running through the house with a flaming toaster in my hands…hey, I didn’t know there was a damn Lego in it. My Kitchen Aid mixer decided my makeup was too shiny so it blew flour all over my face making me look like an albino. I swear I walk into my kitchen and everything in there starts to snicker and plot. I can’t be the only one who has this problem though. Surely there are more cooks like me in this world who called their mom crying because there was “a strange bag of body parts” in the ass of the chicken, right? Or people who break out into a cold sweat at the prospect of cooking rice. I’m convinced that I should apply for a job in a sushi place, I make the best damn sticky rice you’ve ever seen! And I seriously cannot be the one solo person who has literally scooped out a wad of spaghetti noodles and thrown them against the cabinet to see if they stick…and then put them back in the pot. I hate to admit this, but my poor family has eaten more floor groceries then they know about too. 5 second rule? Nah, as long as the dog hasn’t gotten to it before I have…we’re good.

Maybe if I focused on it I could become a great cook. Maybe I  could be like Paula Deen with her 9,000 sticks of butter or Emeril with his “BAM!” in everything. But for now I will sit back and celebrate the fact that I haven’t needed the assistance of the fire department yet.

C.D. Taylor