I have decided to become a master chef. Not like, open a restaurant and hand people food because absolutely not, but like have people over and be all, “Hey, I made all this food and guess fucking what it won’t kill you.”
Most of you jagweeds have some knowledge in cooking but I, on the other hand, have relied for 32 years on the following method:
Frighteningly accurate depiction of my life.
- Grab bowl.
- Fill with cereal.
- Fetch tiniest spoon (obsessed with small utensils, it’s fine).
- Shovel in general face direction.
This is not entirely my fault. The folks were terrible cooks. Even easy stuff, like my dad’s idea of making a healthy breakfast smoothie was putting milk, chocolate, heaping spoonfuls of sugar, and raw eggs into a blender.
Raw. Eggs. And that’s just the tip of the cow-tongue-filled iceberg.
So in a turn for a better life, I honest to god have been giving cooking the old college try. Bought a cookbook, try to go out less, traipse around farmer’s markets in floral prints, and prepare actual food in the kitchen that came with this apartment.
Some friends have suggested that I try Blue Apron, but wtf. That’s the IKEA of food delivery. If you’re going with a home food delivery option, you know you can buy that shit already put together, right? Boggles the mind.
Anyway, so in the past two days of kitchen dickery, it’s a goddamn miracle San Diego is still standing.
Monday, I decided to make some variation of quinoa spaghetti. I know what you’re thinking:
It’s a gift. So about a month ago I had two stovetop pots in which I’d cook. With the largest of the two, I went to use a vegetable steamer to prepare a sweet potato. Well it ran out of water without my knowing (besides the burning smell, but everyone ignores that, right?) and I was just frying the shit out of the non-stick bottom. Like it bubbled up and hardened when it dried, just terrible. I laughed it off, washed it and put it lovingly back in its cupboard.
A couple days later I showed it to a friend, who’s already large brown eyes grew about twice their size. Horrified, he raised them up to meet mine.
“You know that non-stick stuff is where they keep the cancer, right? You’re not fucking cooking with that.”
I dunno, who knew? But I obliged and in the garbage it went.
Whoops.
Back to Monday, with that larger one deceased, I resorted to using a tiny saucepan for the spaghetti. We’ve covered that I like tiny things, so this felt like a win-win.
Working from home, this was to be my fancy ass lunch. I went to boil water and in went the spaghetti. Well wouldn’t you know my phone rang and thus began an impromptu meeting, all the while spaghetti boiling.
Upon my decidedly delayed return to the kitchen, lo did I discover I had boiled out all the water. All. Of. It. All the pasta stuck blackened to the sides of the pan like lovely little angel haired carcinogens. In the garbage it went.
Frustrated, I decided to abandon the idea for the remainder of the day and went out for dinner, took home leftovers. This was a solid plan because that’s TWO whole meals I didn’t have to bother destroying.
Happily I went to a client’s office the next day, food in tow, already packaged in its neat little togo container. Thought to myself, “How nice that it’s not in a styrofoam container, because you can’t microwave that earth polluting shit.” Lunch comes, pop that fella in the microwave, set timer for 2 minutes. Went back to work while it warmed its little self up.
Well that’s when I started hearing a sharp, loud, popping sound.
It didn’t dawn on me for a couple seconds that it could be my fault the break room was under attack, but then went to investigate. Peaked in the glass microwave window, AND EVERYTHING WAS ON FIRE. Flames were lighting up rapidly all around the sides of the container, as meanwhile I danced around helplessly like a goddamn moron wondering, “Oh no! But if I hit stop, is this going to fucking kill me?!”
Proving this actually happens in real life.
Decided to chance it and hit stop, and thank the murkin-loving lord that the fire immediately extinguished. It was quickly known that I was the fire starter, and in between bellowing fits of laughter, inquiries streamed in to the tune of, “How do you not know that you can’t put tinfoil in the microwave?!”
IN MY DEFENSE. You do put tinfoil in the oven. The oven is a hot place, too. And it also happens to be a place wherein food is warmed. AND said microwave had zero damage and can live another day. I think that’s enough for exoneration.
Anyway, it’s going to be a long time until I can have you over for delicious/edible/non-cancerous food, but mark my words, I’ll keep trying.
With a well-maintained fire detector.
