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

"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 Buster 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.
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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 the cookies 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 Bing’s chain saw, trying to cut it. Bing 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 2009 by Melech all rights reserved
The next column will be posted on November 07, 2009

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