If we want to talk about a kitchen disaster that could have had more serious consequences than it did, I would need to tell this experience.
When we lived in our first house, we still had only one
car which my husband always took to work. So, the family either walked, rode
our bikes, or didn’t go places or do things unless they were within walking or
biking distance.
One day I was fixing supper and must have needed
something at the store. And for some strange reason, the car was home in the
garage. Perhaps my husband was on a business trip. I don’t remember.
And because I needed to steam the potatoes in the
pressure cooker, which took less than 30 minutes, I figured we could jump into
the car, buzz up the road to the brand-new King Soopers store, get the item,
and be back before the potatoes were ready. No wasted time. I hurriedly put our
little family into the car—and we were off.
However, to my horror, when we came down the steep hill
and turned the corner to our home, there was smoke coming out of the house and
a fire truck was there putting out a cooking fire in the kitchen. A fire that
had begun when, for some reason the rubber gasket on the lid of the steamer
didn’t seal causing the scant water in the pot to evaporate.
What a mess! In spite of the fact the firemen tried to
do as little damage as they could to put out the fire, it was still awful.
Though our insurance company paid the claim, it didn’t pay for someone to clean
up the water bath and blackened paint on the walls. That took a lot of elbow
grease to clean up! And it was MY elbow grease….
Lesson learned: NEVER, EVER leave the house when
something is cooking on the stove! Anything could go wrong. Because the odds
are it will!
Now, if we are talking about COOKING disasters, there
are plenty of those in my lifetime, too. In fact, I hate cooking. The failure
rate is way too high when I am the person doing the cooking.
Here’s just ONE experience of a major kitchen disaster:
Alexander* and I are two peas in a pod. Some days
are nothing but terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.
Last Thursday was one of them. (January 2021)
I told my husband Louis not to eat before I got home
after practicing the organ at the chapel following the religious education
class I teach for high school students. (He had gone to Seminary
with me that morning to play a video during the lesson.) I told him I was
in the mood for a REAL breakfast, and I was going to fix an omelet,
bacon, muffins, and some cottage potatoes. He liked the idea of a
good breakfast. Me? I could hardly wait to get home and start
cooking! Yum!
But…I haven’t practiced culinary skills for a long time
(nuking something in the microwave doesn’t qualify) and everything went
wrong. Well, almost. The orange juice and milk were okay.
I got a terrific set of pans for my wedding 52 years
ago. They are heavy cast aluminum, but over the years the bottoms got
warped from all the heat from the burners. When that happened, my first
husband Ross would take the pans out to the garage and hold a blow torch on
them until he was able to pound out the bottoms for a flat cooking surface once
again. Voila! Just like new.
Only, Ross has been gone for a long time, and Louis
doesn’t do that kind of thing. Instead, he constantly asked me to get rid
of the set and buy a completely new set. One year for Christmas Louis
even gave me a complete Rachel Ray set. But I know HOW to cook with the
ones I have. That new set was too fancy. Expensive. And I told him
that if we were cooking for eight people every day like I used to, it would be
worth getting a new set. But not now. It is way too late in the
game for the upgrade. I returned the pans to get a gift I could really
use.
After that and a few more pointed suggestions that we
get new pans, Louis got tired of my negative answers to his pleas. About three
years ago he went out and bought two heavy—and I do mean HEAVY—cast iron
skillets, because he saw a recipe online and decided to start
cooking. The pans were both too large and too small for the kind of
preparation we do for two people. And too heavy for me to handle.
My aging body just cannot pick up that kind of weight anymore. Plus, Louis’
desire to cook lasted for only one or two meals. Then nothing.
Louis got the same “cooking bug” again a few weeks
ago. This time, he went out and bought two frying pans—also odd sizes for
our needs—but at least I could handle them.
So, that morning when I got home the cooking adventure
began. I prepared the muffins first. Easy, peasy and put them into
the oven. The omelet and potatoes could cook while the muffins were
baking. However, I wasn’t used to using these new pans, and I
underestimated how fast and hot they prepared the food.
The
next thing I knew, the potatoes were scorched! While trying to turn them
over and eliminate the tainted ones, I began to smell an awful burning
odor. YUP! The omelet—completely charred on the bottom and the top
still a really runny egg mixture—was a disaster. There was NO saving
anything from that—though I did try to scrape char off the bottom and cook the
rest of the eggs. Didn’t work out. What a surprise, huh?
The bell dinged for the muffins but, because I wanted
to eat them HOT, I just turned off the oven and left them in for a couple more
minutes while I wrestled with the burnt food on the stove top.
By this time, I was screaming bloody murder stuff like,
“No wonder I hate to cook! The failure rate with me is too high, and I
don’t LIKE to cook anyway.” Louis heard the commotion and came into the
kitchen offering to take over and prepare a completely new omelet for the two
of us. That made me even madder! I told him I wouldn’t eat it, so not to
cook anything for me, and I flounced out of the house. But not before I
took the muffins out of the oven. By then they weren’t burnt, but way too
dry. I didn’t care and took one with me.
Got into the car and backed out of the driveway….but
there was no place to go. No one to go visit. No store where I
needed to purchase anything. Nothing to do. I had already practiced the
organ that morning. Nothing. I ended up sitting in the church parking lot
and tried to read on my smart phone. Couldn’t even focus on that!
So, I just sat there until the huff was finally over and then I drove
home.
Louis had indeed fixed a new omelet and salvaged enough
potatoes for his meal. He had prepared the bacon, too. Then he ate
and cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen. By the time I walked in, it
looked like no major crisis had happened at all.
I don’t remember what else I did that day.
Probably NOTHING that could have been considered great, since I was so over the
top enraged about my cooking skills. But you can be sure I more than
likely thought the whole day was a piece of junk.
Ah, yes! Alexander and I could have been twins on
that crazy morning. Nothing worthwhile came my way the rest of that day,
I’m sure. My attitude killed it all.
Some days are nothing but terrible, horrible, no good,
very bad days. That was one of them!
Welcome to my world, Alexander!
*Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is a children’s book written by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Ray Cruz. It won several awards during the 70’s and was a Reading Rainbow book. Alexander and I could have been twins!
