Can't Cook, Shouldn't Cook

I've been watching Come Dine With Me a lot lately. I don't know why, I don't even like cooking... or rather, cooking doesn't like me.

A couple of weeks ago, inspired by CDWM, I decided to 'cook something different'. I'd been threatening to do this for quite a while, but Hubs usually managed to talk me out of it (sometimes by simply bursting into tears). This time I was determined to create a culinary feast of epic proportions.

I'd found a couple of recipes on the internet and followed the instructions To The Letter. I spent two whole hours of my life chopping and measuring and weighing and stirring, and ended up with something that resembled shite on a plate.

When I mentioned this incident on my blog, a kind person sent me an mega-simple recipe that even I couldn't muck up. Ha, yeah, okay. I replied to kind person thus:

"I've decided to stick to what I know best, which is jars and frozen things, stuff I don't actually have to make myself. I'm well into Uncle Ben's sauces at the moment. Last night I tossed a jar into a casserole (not the actual jar, I'm not that daft), threw in some pasta, frozen peas and corn, and lobbed it into the oven. Then we went to the pub (yay!). When we got back an hour later, amazingly it wasn't burnt to a crisp like most of my cooking. Edible meal! Hubs could hardly believe it, I could tell he wanted to phone people about it and maybe put a declaration in the newspaper or something."

But even I, charcoal-expert extraordinaire, can ruin a simple pasta dish. The other night, in my haste to get in the bath with Frank Skinner - great sentence, if only it were true - my only thought was to make sure the oven was lit. It's a gas cooker, probably not a wise appliance for somebody who can't smell but I like to live life on the edge. It has an electric ignition, but I also use one of those long clicky things that sparks like a flame thrower, just to make sure the Gas Is Lit. I'm very big on making sure the Gas Is Lit.

So I made sure the oven was lit and threw in the casserole. Then, having endured many gas balls crackling across the kitchen, I opened the door, checked the gas was lit, then closed the door again. Repeat several times until absolutely sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Gas Is Most Definitely Lit.

Jumped in bath with Frank (wooohoooo). An hour later, hauled my crumpled carcass out and went to check on din-dins.

Gas still lit, that's good. Casserole still cold, that's bad.

One hour on gas mark ½ does not a meal make.

"Dinner done?" Hubs asked, with that smile he only uses when trying to look happy about me cooking.

"About an hour," I said.

"I thought it only took an hour," he said, forcing the smile to stay on his face despite all the questions racing through his mind (like 'Hope its vaguely edible this time' or 'Its gonna be coal casserole again, I just know it').

"Forgot to put the cooker on a gas mark," I shrugged casually.

It's not actually my fault I can't cook. It's not just because I have no sense of smell, it's my mother, she can't cook either (I hope she never reads this!). It's clearly a genetic thang.

I have memories/nightmares from my childhood of my mother's cooking. She once made toffee apples, got us all excited about them as we waited for them to 'set'. When my sister and I were finally allowed into the kitchen, we found 12 apples on a tray with sticks in them. No toffee. The toffee had slipped off and languished stickily in the tray. We were chipping away at it for weeks.

Dad, a keen gardener, had a glut of strawberries one year. Mom thought she'd make jam with them. A big cooking session went on in the kitchen. It was like a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, all hissing steam and wooden spoons.

That strawberry jam lasted forever. Throughout my entire childhood there was this endless supply of dark red liquid that had the consistency and taste of slightly lumpy washing up liquid. We found it in our sandwiches, we found it in our bowls of ice cream, we found it on crackers and biscuits.

I still can't eat strawberry jam.

Mom once read a recipe on the side of a bran cereal box, and we endured malt loaf (made from bran cereal) for decades afterwards, and none of us even like it.

We didn't have bowls of rice pudding, we had slices on a tea plate (with a dollup of home-made jam on top).

During a bread strike mom decided to make her own loaves. They were like bricks, you could barely get a knife through them. We tried to soften it in soup, but it sank to the bottom of bowls like a rock.

I still shudder in horror whenever I think about mom's home-made bread, hacked from the loaf and spread with gloops of home-made strawberry jam. I reckon it put me off cooking for life.

That's my excuse anyway.

P.S. Love ya, Marmee. x

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