"Did you ever...?" (Cooking)

By: Melech Mood: don't know Date: 08/16/2008 23:27:05 Music: None

"Did you ever...?"

by Melech

Did you ever wonder how some people get to be such great cooks? I believe that
all people fall into three categories. The first group is made up of men and
women who are just natural born cooks. Everything comes easy to them and
whatever they cook or bake turns out wonderful. My sister belongs to that
group.



The second group is comprised of people who take classes or read books and
become quite proficient at cooking and baking. My neighbour John and his wife
both belong to that group.



Starving people would reject the food cooked by the third and final group to
which I belong. It's not that I don't try; I really do, but nothing turns out
the way it's supposed to.



My pancakes bear a vague resemblance to Frisbees, and when I accidentally
dropped one, it cracked the ceramic floor tile.



The recipe for chili looked fairly ease to follow, but as I was stirring it,
the metal spoon dissolved and the chili refused to give the handle back to me.

.

How difficult could it be to roast a chicken? Nothing to it. When I opened the
oven six hours later to check it, there was nothing in the roasting pan except
some burnt pudding. Nobody will ever convince me that the chicken didn't run
away from home when my back was turned.



Wouldn't you think that beef stew with dumplings would be the easiest thing in
the world to make? You just throw in some meat, vegetables, seasonings, and
then drop the dumplings on top when it is boiling. I had no luck with that at
all. The dumplings absorbed every bit of the stew and then hardened into a
solid mass. I had to use a hammer and a chisel to get it out of the pot.



My hamburgers didn't turn our right either. I am still using them to replace
the cork coasters I ate one day, thinking that they were cookies that I baked a
few days ago, because they tasted just the same.

It’s a good thing that I decided to make macaroni and cheese
one day.  I was able to use it to
re-grout the ceramic tile in the shower.

The perch fillets were a big waste of time. I think I used
too much oil and they all swam away when I wasn't looking.



Who would ever believe that a tuna-noodle casserole would vanish in the oven?
All that was left at the bottom of the baking dish was one dried-up pea and
part of a burnt noodle.

I don't know what went wrong with the meat loaf, but I broke my electric knife
and my neighbour Mark’s chain saw, trying to cut it. Mark isn’t speaking to me,
but all  was not lost because I am using
the meatloaf as a doorstop.



I opened a can of soup and had to eat it cold from the can because I ruined all
my pots and pans and couldn't heat up the soup.  Ever since I left the aluminum foil on a toaster pastry, my
microwave is angry at me and refuses to work. It goes into "failure
mode" whenever I approach it.  I
couldn’t use my electric frying pan either. 
I replaced the frayed cord, plugged it in, and knocked out all the power
in the neighbourhood.  Now, none of my
neighbours are speaking to me.



Yesterday, I saw a book entitled, "Cooking is Fun". I bought the book
and raced home with it. It was just the right size to replace the broken leg on
my bed.

 







"Did you
ever...?" is a weekly newspaper column by Melech

©copyright 2008 by Melech all rights reserved

 The next column will be posted on
August 23, 2008

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