Rachael Ray I Am Not…

Or Emeril… or Julia Childs… or whoever that dude is on Hell’s Kitchen…

I WANT to be, but I fall very short.

I’ve done a few things about it, but I’m still not a good cook.

Yes, I’ve had some successes. Few. And they come when it’s important in my life, like cooking a meal for a guy for the first time, Thanksgiving dinner with church or when you invite Pastor Man for dinner. Of course, all of those times involved MULTIPLE phone calls to the BFF or her husband to seek advice and for them to talk me off the proverbial edge.

And when your son gets on stage and proclaims to the body of his elementary school that you “can’t cook. Period.” you know that you aren’t that great of a cook.

Please know that my mother worked with me in the kitchen. She did her best to set me up for success. I knew how to make the meals that we ate often and she sent me on my way with a cookbook, so that I would know how to make the important things… like her chocolate cake with icing and banana bread. I’ve yet to make either.

And I think part of my problem is my stove…. but I will be remedying that soon. But the last time I talked to you about my stove, it had TWO semi-functional burners and now we’re down to one.

Because I caught the stove on fire AGAIN.

And yes, I said AGAIN. As in more than once I have sent pretty flames up the front of my avacado green stove.

You might remember the great meltdown of 2007 in which I was cooking RICE. Come on people.. rice! It’s not like I was cooking something with the word flambe in the name… it was RICE.

A little except of that post…

That’s me…

That’s me right after the meltdown…

but it was more then melting…there were flames!

(Now, I need to point something out here…I don’t think I have ever produced flames in the kitchen…so this would be a first…)

But here’s what happened….

It was time for lunch… (I thought I would be considerate and eat before I called Yvonne) and so I set out to make my traditional “there’s no left overs” lunch — rice. Rice isn’t hard, ya know? You put it in water and you let cook for 20 minutes (or until all the water is soaked up in the rice — which, hey! is about 20 minutes.) I’m good at this. I make rice ALL THE TIME!!!!! Sometimes I put alfredo sauce on it, sometimes butter, sometimes cheese…. (they say peanut butter is good, but I’ve not tried that).

The point being — this was not a new cooking experience here.

I put in one cup of rice and one cup of water (remember this point — very important) — I sit it on the back left burner and I flip the knob and I walk away. I know that I have 3 minutes before it’s time to go back, stir, turn down to simmer, and wait.

All of a sudden I hear this noise…it sounded like a thud and I thought “that stupid mouse is back” (yes, there is a mouse in the house too) but it wasn’t a thud…it was a WHOOSH….

I turn around and look into the kitchen and I just see smoke.

I walk in the kitchen and that’s when I see the flames. Had they been in someone else’s kitchen I would’ve said they were pretty — but in mine…they were downright scary…

So, I utter a few explicitives (and that bothers me because I’ve REALLY been working on my mouth….) I find a bowl in the sink and I douse the flames…

Guess who turned the wrong burner on? Guess where that empty juice pitcher was?

I grab the pitcher handle and that’s when I realize (because my head feels a little hot) that the pitcher is still on fire…so I throw that in the sink and put it out…

Then I survey the damage…

Open the door, turn on the fan…everyone is okay…just feeling a little on the stupid side…

Many times I set the smoke detector off… at which point, my son, who loves to joke and kid will shout “dinner’s done” before he grabs a dishtowel to fan the smoke away from the squealing box in the living room as I rush around to open doors and windows.

After the meltdown, we went to two burners… until just a few weeks ago when I was making spaghetti… as I’m standing there waiting impatiently for it to finish, flames shoot up. They calm back down and go away and since there was only a minute left of the time, I, like a grade A idiot, put the pan back ON the burner.

In which the pan boils over and even bigger flames shoot up.

And now?

I have one sole burner. But like I said, we’re getting a new stove.

While I can’t cook, I can bake. I just made bread pudding last night for the first time and I deviated from the recipe (which scares me) but I did it.

I am the running joke when it comes to kitchen mishaps… at church, in my family, with my friends, and now at the elementary school… and that’s okay. I’m okay with that.

In fact, should someone feel the need to nominate me for America’s Worst Cook, I would be okay with that too…

But I do try…

That’s something, right?

**************

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by the American Egg Board.

***********

Don’t forget! There’s still time left to get in on the Where He Met Me Carnival and Contest… ends at Midnight tonight, but even if you’re not playing along, PLEASE go read these wonderful stories and be blessed… and in honor of my 600th post, I’ve got another contest going on here…