Cacio e Pepe. That’s Cheez Whiz and Pepper, Right?

A recipe landed in my inbox the other day with the subject line, “This Sounds Yummy!”  I was excited about the prospect of “Yummy!”  I mean, who doesn’t like “Yummy!”?

It was labeled as a 30 minute meal, so that made it seem even “Yummy!-er” to me.

Maybe we’ll have it for dinner tonight!

The title of the recipe had fifteen words in it, three of them weren’t in English, and took me about a minute to read.  I had to look up the non-English words.  30-minute meal?  I’m already down to 27 minutes.

I pressed on.

Wait… what’s that word in the ingredient list?  Bocconcini.  What would a 15th Century Italian painter be doing in a 30 minute meal?  I googled “bocconcini.”    “Small, semi-soft, white and rindless unripened mild cheeses… and were once made only from the milk of water buffaloes.”

Uh.  Suddenly the 15th century Italian painter in a saute pan wasn’t sounding so bad.

I am certain the Chattanooga Food Lion does not have a Bocconcini aisle.  Perhaps there is a Bocconcini Cheez Whiz I could substitute.

21 minutes…

More ingredients.  Sausage.  Check.  See:  Italian painter in the saute pan.

Broccolini.  Oh great.  That’s gotta be related to broccoli, right?  Again, I envision asking for broccolini in Food Lion.  Blank stare, “brocca-whut?”  Yeah, dude, I don’t know either.

17 minutes…

Garlic.  Know what that is.  San Marzano tomatoes.  I don’t know where San Marzano is, but the Bi-Lo has Sand Mountain tomatoes which seem close enough to me.  Chicken stock or milk.  Now we’re talking, unless they mean “buffalo milk.”  Grated Pecorino Romano.  Oh crap.  I’m sure there’s some difference between romano and pecorino romano which involves 3.2 hours traveling to five stores to find it.  Tub of pesto.  Now any ingredient with the word “tub” in it, I’m sure I can find at Food Lion.

12 minutes….

On to the cooking instructions.  It’s a 30 minute meal, how hard can it be?  But why are there eight paragraphs?  And why if I add up all the cooking times in each paragraph does it come to 85 minutes?  And why does one paragraph start with, “While the balls are cooking…”  This truly doesn’t bode well for the 15th century Italian painter.

1 minute… tick, tick, tick… when does the Yummy! part start?… tick, tick, tick…

This story SHOULD end with, “… and then I woke up.”

But instead it ends with a confession.

I.  Can’t.  Cook.

There.  I said it.

Now this isn’t to say I don’t cook.  As I type this, I have pork chops in a crockpot.  I was all out of bocconcini, so I used Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix and chicken broth from a can instead.

But my dear friend Kelly, who has probably ended up in a fetal position the second she read the words “crockpot” and “from a can,” REALLY cooks.  She pretends like she can’t, but she’s brilliant at it.  She even has a fancy camera and lighting and takes really pretty photographs of what she cooks.  Kelly even makes her own pasta, which I think is a little over the top, but don’t tell her I said that.

Kelly is so incredibly accomplished at so many things, I’m astounded she’ll even be my friend.  I think it’s because I have so much blackmail information on her we have such a long history together.  Like all the trips to the casinos to work out our boyfriend issues on the blackjack dealers.  And going to happy hours to meet online people from AOL which inevitably ended up with someone drunk and screaming at the top of their lungs, “Oh yeah?  Well, I’ll meet you at the Waffle House at 2 am and I’ll kick your ass!”  You know… history.

Gosh, I’m glad Kelly won’t be reading this.

Anyway, Chef Kelly has taken pity on me and has agreed to try to teach me how to cook.  This is a little bit like agreeing to teach foreign policy to Miss Congeniality, but Kelly seems undaunted… even excited.

That’s a little over the top, but don’t tell her I said that.