Friday, February 10, 2012

And That's Why I Should Have Taken Home Ec

Me:  "I burned up dinner. In a crockpot."

Heather:  "How did you manage to do that?"

Me:  "Exactly."

Heather:  "Wow. That takes real talent."

It's true. I threw some pork chops, seasoning and soup in the crockpot before I left for work. When I got home, it was a dry, charred, stinky mess.

It occurred to me around 3 in the afternoon that I might have set the pot on the high setting instead of low. I was in a hurry to get out of the house and didn't pay attention.

When I finally talked to Bill around 5:30, he asked the standard "what's for dinner" question.

"Weelll," I said. "That depends on what happened to the pork chops in the crockpot."

"What does that mean?"

"I may have left it on high and they may have burned up.".

"Ok then. I guess I'll go home and see if the house is on fire."

Thankfully there was no fire. But Bill was standing in the drive-way with the front door open.

"You may want to take a look at this. "

Ever so supportive, he left it up to me to decide if the burned, dried-up mess was edible for dinner. It wasn't.

So off to our local café for dinner.

"Look, babe. The special tonight is pork chops."

Seriously, not funny.  Ok...maybe it's funny.

I would like to say that this was a rare mishap for me in the kitchen, but sadly it's not. It's not the first time I've burned up something in the crockpot. Other times I've forgotten to turn the damn thing on and had a pot of room temperature raw food at the end of the day. Bill cringes any time I decide to cook or bake because I create the biggest disaster in the kitchen.

And I have always been this way.  I was never interested in the kitchen as a kid, and never took Home Economics in school.  Now I feel this obligation to at least try to cook something every once in a while, but I'm really not very good at it, and I'm okay with that.

From time to time I think I might want to take a cooking class, but the reality is that being Julia Childs or Rachel Ray just isn't me.  I'm messy.  I don't know my way around my kitchen very well.  One time I actually looked up how to hard boil an egg.  And I'm busy.  The last thing I want to do is spend my time in the kitchen.  Cooking is just not my thing.

Some day I may take that cooking class, just for the experience, but I doubt that it will change who I am.  I will still put the crockpot on the wrong setting, burn grilled cheese, add the wrong spice or ingredient  (I once added lemon extract instead of vanilla to a brownie mix).  The downside is that I probably won't be able to teach Scarlett much about cooking.  But maybe that's something we can learn together if she takes that home ec class I should have taken in school.

2 comments:

  1. Don't feel bad, I took Home Ec and still can't cook, but sew I got that sewing thing down:)

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  2. Lani you are VERY talented at sewing! I'm not allowed near sewing machines for fear of injury.

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