Food Fight: My Struggle to Survive in the Kitchen

          Food essays are usually written by people who love to cook or who are experienced chefs. Sometimes people even do cooking challenges and then write a memoir about it (Julie and Julia, anyone?). Basically, people who write food essays tend to know what they’re doing. Yeah, this isn’t one of those essays.

            One would think that I would be a really good cook. My miemie (my mom’s mom) is an amazing cook and it’s impossible not to leave her house with enough leftovers to last for at least a few days. She spends hours, sometimes even days, preparing dinner for family events that are sometimes just as small as a birthday party.

            Her food is always delicious (and I’m not just saying that because I have to). As my family and I walk up her front path on holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas, our mouths are already watering as all the different aromas seem to seep out of her house. And when it’s finally time to dig in, the experience only gets better. I can’t recall a single time that I haven’t left her table feeling stuffed.

            A few weeks ago she even sent me a letter in which she talked about her love of cooking and how it’s been something that my family has enjoyed doing for a long time now. “Guess I just followed in my parent’s footsteps; they both loved to cook. Some Sundays he would cook for 20-25 relatives,” she wrote to me. My miemie tends to cook enough for 20-25 people as well, despite the fact there’s only 10-15 of us.

            The amount of people that my relatives have cooked for seems like a lot to me, especially when I can’t even cook for just one person – myself. My mom is a good cook as well, but I don’t think she enjoys it in the same way that my miemie does. (I don’t think that Betty Crocker even enjoys it in the same way she does.) My mom usually makes a simple dinner that doesn’t require a lot of work, seeing as she works late on most nights. Not that I’m blaming her, but because of this, I never learned how to cook.

            My go to meal when I need to make something for myself is Beefaroni. This sounds kind of sad (and maybe even gross) to a lot of people, but I actually love it. I can also make myself cereal, toast, and Bagel Bites. I’m pretty talented.

            I’ve had many blunders in the kitchen because of my lack of experience, which have proved to make for some funny (and somewhat embarrassing) stories over the years. I remember the time when I was maybe fourteen or fifteen and my mom called from the road to ask me to make dinner. My parents and my brother were running late on their way home and my mom thought she could trust me to make a simple spaghetti dinner. She thought wrong.

            As I was preparing the meal, I was feeling really good about it. What could possibly go wrong when all I had to do was boil noodles and heat sauce? When my family finally arrived home they were starving and instantly dug into my beautiful creation. With the first bite, they immediately slowed down and looked up at me. Nothing (even their extreme hunger) could persuade them to keep eating it. Even I was repulsed by it, and spaghetti is my favorite meal.

            “Ok, talk me through what you did,” my mom said to me, and I started going through the process step by step.

            “I filled the pot three-quarters of the way with water and let it boil,” I began. My mom nodded as I listed off each step. “Then I put the pasta in. Then I poured the sauce into a separate pot and turned on the heat. I put water in the jar, swished it around to get all the sauce out, and poured that in the pot like you do. Then I stirred the –”

            My mom cut me off. “Wait. How much water did you put in the jar?” she asked hesitantly.

            “I filled it,” I said quietly. My family started to laugh.

            “Why would you fill it?” my mom inquired. “You’re only supposed to put a little bit in. That’s why the sauce tastes so funny.” I felt my cheeks turn bright red as I realized my mistake. I think I may the only person in the world who could possibly mess up a meal so simple.

            This is nothing compared to the time that I tried to ground up hamburger though. My mom called me from work to ask if I could start making dinner and that she would take over when she got home. I took the package out of the fridge, set it in the pan, and turned up the heat. After a few minutes I pulled out a wooden spoon and went to mash it as I’d seen my parents do so many times before. There was one problem though – it wouldn’t break apart.

            I stood there completely baffled. Why wasn’t this working? I took the spoon with both hands and stabbed the meat over and over, getting more irritated with each hit. Frustrated, I stepped back and looked at it. The meat was still in one piece with little indents all over it from where the spoon had made contact. I thought the meat must be defective, although past experience should have told me that the real problem was myself.

            I called my mom back and launched right into a complaint, telling her that I did exactly what she always did, but that it wasn’t working. She seemed as confused as I did until suddenly she stopped short. “Do you still have the package the meat came in?” she asked. I went over to the trash and pulled it out. As she asked me to read what it said to her, I suddenly stopped short as well. Needless to say, I had ruined a ten dollar steak and my mom was not very happy.

            I don’t just mess up actual meals though. I have this rare talent where I can even destroy microwavable meals. (Between my mom and I, we may hold the Guinness world record for most blown up microwaves.) I was making Easy Mac, which isn’t even real cooking, and I messed it up. My brother and I were in the kitchen when all of sudden an extremely repugnant odor filled the air. We quickly looked to the microwave, which was pouring smoke out from every crevice that would allow it. As I rushed over to remove my mistake, I saw that the bottom of the bowl was completely black and that the noodles were almost gone.

            As I realized that I forgot the water, my brother began to yell at me. “How could you forget the water? That is literally the only step,” he said. Although I was laughing on the outside, I wasn’t feeling so good about myself on the inside. How could I have been so careless? I began to wonder if I’d ever be able to cook for real.

            This summer I thought I would give it a try after I read Julie and Julia and decided that I would learn one new recipe a week (I wasn’t ambitious enough to do one a day as Julie had). I imagined myself learning all sorts of new recipes and blowing my family away with my new skills. Between a job, an internship, and the pure laziness of summer, I never got around to it though. I never even made one meal.

            Lucky for me though, being in college has given me the perfect excuse to rely on either the dining hall, or easy meals such as Ramen or Chef Boyardee. These college staples have allowed me to hide behind a microwavable meal and not have to worry about the day when I’ll actually have to cook.

            As I’m thinking of where I’ll be living next year though, my thoughts are leaning towards an on-campus apartment – with a kitchen. One with an oven and burners and everything. While this sounds exciting, it makes wonder whether or not I’ll end up starving to death – or burning the place down. I’ll be lacking a meal plan, and living off Beefaroni probably won’t be the healthiest thing for me. It’s getting to be the time where I should probably learn a recipe or two (for real this time).

            Some may wonder why I want to go through this hassle. It’s obvious that fate doesn’t want me and cooking to be friends, so why bother? My answer may sound somewhat cheesy or that of a fifties housewife (which I have no intention of becoming), but I really want to be able to cook for my future husband and children. I want to be that mom who always makes something delicious (and can do so from scratch as opposed to from a box). I want to be known for my secret recipes and gourmet dishes. I would love for my children to have a hard time deciding which meal of mine is their favorite and I want their friends to rave about me after staying for dinner.

            I also want to prove people wrong. As of right now, it seems highly unlikely that I’ll ever be able to cook like this. I’m sure anyone reading this is skeptical of whether it’ll even be possible after they’ve read my horror stories. I want it to be possible though and I truly want to learn to cook, for the sake of my future family and for myself.

            My miemie has offered to teach me how to cook and I think that this summer I’ll finally take her up on the offer. It’d be nice to learn a few things, or at least gain some common sense in the kitchen. It’s a valuable skill to have, and could possibly become a passion, like it has for the generations before me. Food and cooking mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life thinking that it’s something that can only be achieved through a microwave and a can. I also don’t want to accidentally poison my future children, because you know, it’d be nice if they lived past age two or so.