Cooking

People keep asking me, "Can you cook? Can you cook?" My response has been, "Yeah, sure. Give me a recipe and I'll follow the instructions." Finally the person in charge of scheduling work duties wanted to see if I could actually cook, or if I was lying. (Why would I lie?) So she put me on cooking duty for Sunday night.

On the menu: Chicken, french fries, cabbage salad.

Ready? Go!

Umm. Uhhh. What do I do?

When I showed up to start cooking, there was a girl there and a guy there. Neither one of them knew very much english. I couldn't ask questions. I couldn't offer my help. I didn't know how the chicken was supposed to be prepared. I saw her chopping cabbage, which I thought I could do, but I had no way of communicating that to her. What hand gestures do you use to say, "I'll do this because I'm too dumb to do anything else. You go do something more important"?

I did see some dirty dishes, so I washed those.

Then another girl showed up. She speaks English and Romanian, so I was able to ask her what I needed to do. "Chop two onions." Okay, I can do that. I got started, chopping onions like a champ. She looks over, "Umm, you're supposed to take off the outer layer first." Oh my gosh, I knew that! Why didn't I do it?! Oh well, moving on.

I kept going and she looks over again, "What are you doing??" "Chopping the onions." "Oh, I meant slice the onions. I need circles." Woops again, but it's no big deal. We can just use the chopped ones.

Next instruction: "slice two carrots." I did this perfectly, or at least well enough that she didn't have to correct me.

While I'm doing the onions and carrots, she is preparing the chicken. She's cutting away all the bad stuff, and seasoning it, and putting them in the pan, and adding spices, and oils, and it's very fancy. I would have never been able to do that without very specific instructions.

Next instruction: "put the onions and the carrots on the chicken." That's easy. I build up some confidence by doing that successfully.

"Get out the french fries from the fridge." It's a good thing I knew they were in the freezer, or I would have failed at that task. I pulled out the french fries and set them on the counter. I look on the bag, and there are no instructions on how long these fries need to be baked, or at what temperature. However, there are instructions on how to deep fry them in a professional deep fryer. That only takes 3-5 minutes. If only we had a professional deep fryer...

"Fill a couple of frying pans with oil." Okay. I do this slowly and with her watching so that I know how much oil to put in.

"Put the fries in the oil." She opens the bag, and I take it and start to dump some fries into the oil. "Woah, woah, woah. You're supposed to put them in a handful at a time." Really? Okay, whatever. Maybe she's worried about splashing, although I'm confident I could have done it without major injuries or necessary trips to the emergency room.

I take the fries and put them a handful at a time into the oil. By now, she is adding oils and sugar and salt and spices to the cabbage and finishing that up. So now the chicken is in the oven, the fries are on the stove, and the cabbage salad is done. Let's check the scoreboard while we wait for them to cook.

Things I did:
Chop onions (incorrectly)
Chop carrots
Put fries in oil (incorrectly)

Things she did:
Completely by herself prepared and seasoned 30 chicken legs and put them in the oven
Add spices and flavoring to the cabbage that the other girl chopped
Watched me as I did the fries.

Are you getting the picture? She's doing 85% of the work, and I'm failing to do 15%.

Now things are cooking, and she'll check the fries every once and a while. She'll check the chicken every once and a while. I'm doing nothing at this point. When the fries are done, she'll scoop them out and put them in a bowl, and put the pan back on the stove.

Oooo oooo oooo! I know how to put fries in the oil now, so I do that! Then I'm back to doing nothing. Forty five minutes passes, and that's pretty much how it goes. She does everything, and when there is a pan with no fries in it, I put fries in it.

It gets to a point where I run out of fries. We've cooked them all, so there's not going to be any need to put any more fries in any more pans. At this point she tells me that I can go eat. She'll finish up the fries, the chicken and everything else.

I go eat because I'm pretty much only in the way at this point.

Conclusion: I'm a liar when I say that I can cook, and I will no longer tell people that I can cook.

[Unless, of course, you want any of these things: Betty Crocker brand cookies (with instructions printed on the package), Jiffy brand muffins (with instructions printed on the package), or peanut butter and honey sandwiches.]