Cooking

Cooking is probably the only thing in my life that is so overrated that it is next to unachievable for me… in this life anyway. I hang to the belief that after I pass from this life, (I guess you could call it graduating to the next class, unless you go to live with the devil, then we could safely guess that you flunked) I will turn out to be a master chef, and all the angels will sing praises to my crème bru`lee, because of which I will live in peace and prosperity, loved by all.
But this is not to convince you that I shall delight you in the next life with the delicacies that I shall prepare, in fact it is written to the end that I may pour out all my woes concerning the cooking pot in this life. The cooking pot was designed by the cavewoman to prepare the small dead animals that they dined on in those days.
The cavewoman’s idea to create a pot to cook things in came after a conversation with her husband. I am sure that the exchange went something like this:
Caveman: “I hungry”
Cavewoman: “I cook dead animal”
Caveman: “What you cook dead animal in?”
Cavewoman: “Uhhhhhh…”
Okay, I am not quite sure about the exact words. But, after the exchange she set to work and made a pot. Her husband died meanwhile from hunger, it took so long. But that is beside the point. The point is that she set upon a marvelous invention, one that many generations have learned to master. Cavewoman, Einstein, George Washington, all learned the art of the cooking pot, all the way up to me.
But I shall disappoint the generations and stick exclusively to cooking ice and toast. (I still need someone else to butter it.) I am a pro at making ice and will gladly start a class to teach those poor people who haven’t progressed as far as me in their cooking as I, how to learn the delicate art of making ice. It can be used in smoothies.
The other day I was asked to perform the impossible and cook dinner for the family. I chose to do pasta and tomato sauce, because it seemed easy, not because I am fond of it, because I am quite the opposite, actually. I figured that if it didn’t turn out the way it was pictured in my mind, the parents and I could eat toast, and my siblings, who will eat anything, could eat the pasta. Anyway, I put the pasta in a pot and covered it with water, then stuck the tomato sauce into a sauce pan. You may notice that I used the word “stuck” in speaking about the tomato sauce. That was for a reason. But that is later in the story. Mom came in just when the water was starting to boil in the pot with the pasta. It was then I learned that I am not supposed to put the pasta in the pot until the water is boiling. (Make a note of that, everyone. Otherwise your pasta will turn out like mine did one big piece of pasta. It was just like a big, squishy cake. Sheash!)
Meanwhile, while I was trying to cure the pasta, (It didn’t work, plus I burned all my fingers) the tomato sauce took the opportunity to do its “sticking” part. Smoke billowed around the kitchen, and I forgot the pasta, hasted across the kitchen, and placed my face directly above the pan. A mistake. The cries of anguish that filled the house were unbearable. But they didn’t proceed from my mouth, they emanated from my mom, and the reason for her making them was the state of my face. The sauce (the part that wasn’t stuck) had been boiling, preparatory to sticking, and had popped upward onto my face. It looked like I had suddenly became a pizza face, my face was all covered in little, painful burns. (I guess that you could rightly call me a pizza face, because I was covered in tomato sauce.) Thus comes the sad end to my cooking career.
“Waste not want not” is my family’s motto when it comes to the consuming of my cooking, and you can rightly say “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Well, you might not be merry, but you will die. They abandoned the “waste not want not” and adopted “a wasting a day keeps the doctor away”.
But the story does have a happy ending, because of which I am, well, happy. I placed the pasta cake on a platter and put the sauce crisp on the top. It looked pretty good and I carried it into the dining room, to the awaiting family.
We had a delicious dinner of toast and ice, and the chickens waxed fat on the pasta. A few died, but mom cooked them, and they turned out very nice.
Thus ends this story.