comment on cooking

When I was younger, like early teens, I used to make up ‘recipes’ for cakes and things and bake them in the oven and my family even sometimes ate them. Those things that were edible. I had no idea what I was doing, but I did like the idea of cooking. When I got older, I still experimented, but had deep fears of cooking the ‘hard’ stuff like turkeys, hams, roasts, and ribs–all that sort of thing. I won’t even tell you how long it took me to try roasting my first chicken. But let’s just say it wasn’t all that long ago. First time I did any of those, I was terrified. I thought I would ruin dinner. (I still remember the time when I got home from school and mom asked me to turn down the chicken in the oven and I turned it up instead. It did not turn out well. Mom said, “You crucified my chicken!”) Anyhow, turns out if you follow some directions and common sense, none of them are actually that hard. And once you get used to cooking pretty much anything, well, all of it starts to be old hat. Or at least it seems to be the case for me.

Anyhow, the topic comes up because of all the TV shows and commercials that circle around people’s total inability to figure out how to cook a turkey. I mean, really? Now days, you can buy a bag and stuff it in and roast it in 2 hours and it’s moist and ridiculously easy. As a plot device, I’m not buying it. I know, there probably are some pretty clueless cooks out there, but still. Not buying it. Especially as it requires the cooks to be beyond stupid. And most of the time they are women, which only pisses me off.

On another subject entirely, I found out that slime mold is what’s most likely to make the branches of trees in the upper canopy very slippery. Slime mold. That’s a horror flick waiting to happen, isn’t it? Now if only it could be zombie slime mold. or no, were-slime mold! That would just be way past awesome, wouldn’t it?

In other news, I killed no kids today, housework was done, I did not stroke out or have a heart attack, nor did I get hauled away to a rubber room. So basically, all is good.

One Comment

  • ChrisP

    A few years ago, when my youngest was 5th grade or so, she expressed the desire to go to the woods and look for slime mold. We live in an arid area (the same town as “Mercedes Thompson”), which means that we don’t *have* woods nearby. We ended up driving several hours and hiking up into the woods behind Multnomah Falls to search for slime molds. Didn’t find any, but we had a good time anyway!

    I just had to share that story because it is rare that other families are familiar with some of the weird and geeky stuff that fascinates ours. 😉 Another example – today my youngest (now in 8th grade) informed me that her life is now complete because the YA book she was reading made reference to caulerpa taxifolia (another semi-obsessive interest). This is the kid whose favorite animal in elementary school used to be the thylacine.

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