Overview of my cooking debacles

So I can do a lot of things....like crochet, tango, walk miles, go to college, have 22 credit hours and 4 part time jobs...but there are some things that I just can't do.

When I was a lot younger I tried to help my grandma and my mom cook.  I was ushered out a lot of the times and told to read a book.  Not being on to argue, I would leave them be and settle in with a nice story.  My great-grandma tried to teach me, and she also showed me how to do certain things in the kitchen, but it was so long ago and I was so easily distracted by washing dishes in her sink (partly because I felt like I was able to do it all on my own, and partly because I had...no have...a very vivid imagination and I would pretend that the dishes and cups and silverware were all ships at sea) I just don't remember anything she taught me.  So I really wasn't in the kitchen cooking that often.

When I was in Jr. High, I tried to do certain things in the kitchen...like make a frozen pizza.  That didn't turn out so well, because apparently you have to take the pizza off the cardboard, it is on top of, before putting it in the oven.  I also made rice crispy treats with a friend...it said four teaspoons, but I didn't know what that meant, of butter...so I put in four sticks.  The treats stuck together even when pulled from the front of the house to the back of the house...very rich tasting treat...and my mom wasn't very happy with that mess when she got home.

When I reached high school, my mom made...again read that MADE...me take a home economics.  "It will be good for you." She always told me.  So there I was, and in store for me was a lot of discussion on children, sewing, leadership, and cooking.  I loved all of the above BUT cooking.  Things went great in the class, until we moved into the cooking portion of the book.  I made a hamburger when we were grilling and started a fire, and I made biscuits that had so much salt in them no one could eat more then a bite.

I thought at that point I would be done...I wasn't going to take "Foods" class. But one of my friends, Ryno, decided he wanted to do it and wouldn't take the class without me.  So there I was again, with my poor teacher who probably had a minor heart attack after seeing my name on the list of students in her class that semester, taking another cooking class.  This ended up not being so horrible.  We spent a lot of time in the kitchen, which was really scary.  But after my team learned how horrible of a cook I was, they only allowed me to stir things, once in awhile, and with someone watching me, and they allowed me to wash dishes.  They would throw things on the ground and hand them to me to wash, just so I would get points in the class, and not kill anyone with food poisoning or with a fire...nice of them all, really.  

 

After that class was finished, I had only a year left of high school, and I wasn't planning on cooking much of anything.  Then one day Kat came over, and we decided to watch a movie and eat popcorn.  So I had to put the popcorn in the microwave.  I put the bag of popcorn in the microwave, closed the door, and pressed the popcorn button.  I walked away back downstairs to my room where we were watching the movie and decided to come back up in a few minutes after the popcorn had stopped popping.  Then my dog came running downstairs (not Bella, my first dog, Lady) She was going back and forth between my bedroom door, and the stairs...and she was barking.  I went up stairs to some sparks of fire shooting out of the microwave and poured the only thing handy, some water, on the microwave (which apparently, you are not suppose to do).  I put the bag of popcorn outside and had to open all of the windows in the house to get that awful popcorn smell out.  The, once white, bag of popcorn, was now totally black.  That was it...I was done.

At this point, the horror stories of my cooking (not all of them are listed above) followed me to college.  This is where I met Brina  and we decided to make pasta, one day, together.  Which we did...and it didn't turn out half bad...but that's because she took over midway through.  Though, even to this day, she usually would rather us go out to eat, then me try to cook.  Which most of my friends are that way too, it must be a defense mechanism. I don't really think I can blame them...what with my history and all, I wouldn't want to eat my food either.

Now Bebe decided I couldn't be that bad of a cook.  Anyone could teach me some of the basics and it would stick.  After we entered my apartments kitchen and I didn't know how to open a jar of canned vegetables, I think he might have given up.  But he still had some faith.  That Christmas his parents gave me a cooking class as a gift....I couldn't wait to try it out, but since I had a lot of studying to do for my Master's it would have to wait until that May.  By this December we finally used it.  I took a cooking class, and no one died!  Not even a fire started!  In the kitchen, given some guidance and some long "discussions" (read a few frustrated phone calls) with my mom about how to make her soups and if I was making the pizza correctly, I have finally been able to make about 5 dishes without deaths or destruction in my wake.  

I plan on learning more and taking more cooking classes and hopefully feeling even more confident.  At one point on this blog, I'm sure, I will go into more in depth detail of a lot of my cooking escapades but for now this will have to suffice.  Tonight I made pizza...St. Louis did not burn to the ground...and I find this to be an award winning feat!  The real question is, what will be next in my quest in learning how to cook and will I kill anyone in the process?