My brother has been a paramedic for nearly 35 years and when people ask him the grossest thing he has ever seen, he says ‘my sister’s cooking.’
Now my rudimentary skills allowed me to keep my daughter adequately fed while she grew up, but they also gave her cause to plead for a store-bought cake for her childhood birthday parties. They gave my ex-husband cause to ask me to ‘please not make that beige stuff anymore.’ They gave a baking instructor cause to inform me that orange rind comes with the orange, when I made the mistake of putting up my hand in class once.
Yes, over the years I have tried to shore up my basic skills a bit by taking a cooking class now and then. Without a whole lot of success, I’m afraid. During one bread-baking workshop, I discovered another student who shared the same level of skill - so we decided to team up. Surely two of us overseeing the placement of those pesky and precise measures of ingredients into the mix master would lead to success. We worked meticulously together, our attention to detail making us fall much further behind the other class participants before the kneading even began. Check, check, check we confirmed to one another as we went down the list one final time. We were set to go and pressed Start on the machine, which caused a massive waterfall glob to shoot a pasty blend straight up to the ceiling and come to land on everyone around us. Like, who doesn’t add ‘Put lid on mix master’ to the instructions?
I’m pretty sure I’ve overshot my abilities more than a few times, resulting in failure which has only added to the folklore about my cooking. Many years ago, leading up to a milestone birthday for my mom, I undertook a multiple layer cake that required cheesecloth and scientific reactions through many grueling phases of preparation. It was another glob on a fancy plate by the time I was done, and I presented it to her at the party with a hint of anger and exasperation. I invested so much into the blasted thing, I told her, that it also constituted her gift. Nothing more could be expected of me that day and I made sure everyone knew.
The first time I encountered vegetarians, though, may be the most dramatic assault my kitchen ever experienced. It was many years ago and we had become good friends by the time I invited them for dinner. I poured over vegetarian cookbooks in anticipation - what could possibly go wrong? I settled on a crusty creamed spinach roll with a raspberry puree – yup, I had set the bar high. I promptly stuck the wooden contraption right into the mix master when I went to puree the fruit, and bright red juice splattered every wall of the kitchen like it was a major crime scene.
Fine. We could do without the stupid puree, I figured, turning to the task of rolling the spinach cream into the dough which had been beautifully rolled out on the table. Time after time I stuffed green ooze back into the slimy dough, patiently rolling and unrolling trying to get it to work. Finally impatience won out and I karate-chopped the middle of the blasted thing, causing green slime to join the red streaks that assaulted my kitchen.
In the end, I called them up to request that they eat before they came for dinner. They good naturedly stopped to pick up pizza for all of us, and we shared a laugh-filled evening amid the mayhem. It became the response to every dinner invitation I extended thereafter: their query about what dinner they should bring along.
Visit Sandy’s column at LifeInRetirement.ca.