Can This Relationship Be Saved?

If you are following my extraordinarily infrequent posts, you know I am learning to cook… extraordinarily infrequently. And in Carol-Land, “learning to cook” means “cooking something in which no ingredient starts with the word ‘Stouffers.’ “

My friend Kelly, in a moment of either sheer grandiosity, debilitating guilt, or fear of public embarrassment should she say ‘no’ (I know all the ex-boyfriend stories, and I’m not afraid to use them)… agreed to impart her culinary wisdom in doses my system could tolerate without having negative side effects.

Or so I thought.

My first step into the world of non-Stouffer’s cuisine was Potato and Leek Soup, chosen because I bought five pounds of potatoes on sale and realized I had just over four pounds more than any one human needed. Kelly was astonished I had four pounds of potatoes, as if no one who knows what they are doing would buy the five pound bag of potatoes! C’mon! They were on sale!

(Yes, I made the soup and took pictures of the whole sordid process. I’ll post about it once I find the cable that allows me to get the pictures out of the camera).

As part of her mentoring Kelly has been telling me I need to go to the farmer’s market. She proclaims, “Everything is more satisfying when it’s fresh and local!”, which for some reason sounds vaguely sexual to me. The fact that I have food and sex paired up in my head probably explains a lot about my current dress size, but moving on, keep walking, nothing to see here…

So today I go to the local farmer’s market. Toward closing time the Guys-Who-Sell-Sweet-Red-Peppers indicate they want to get rid of their inventory. I pull out my last four dollars and ask how many I can get for four bucks. One guy hands me a plastic bag and says, “As many as you can get in there.”

So I’m here to tell you, forty-three peppers are as many as you can get in there and still close the bag. I was quite proud of myself.

I took the peppers home and immediately called my mentor:

Carol: I need to freeze some peppers. After I slice them, what quantity should I bag them in?

Chef Kelly: Are they sweet bell peppers?

Carol: Uh, yeah, is there another kind of pepper?

I could have sworn I heard a big sigh on the phone, but it might have been my imagination.

Chef Kelly: What you need to do is to slice them and put the slices on a large cookie sheet so that none of them are touching each other, then freeze them on the cookie sheet, then transfer them to a plastic bag so they won’t stick together when you take them out.

Carol: But I don’t think I can do that. I have a lot of peppers.

Chef Kelly: How many peppers do you have?

Carol: Uh… about forty.

Then the unthinkable happened:

“FORTY PEPPERS? YOU HAVE FORTY PEPPERS? WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH FORTY PEPPERS?!?”

She yelled! What in the world?!? Is she watching too many Hell’s Kitchen reruns? I mean, really, Kelly was acting as if no one who knows what they are doing would go to a farmer’s market and buy forty-three peppers! C’mon! They were on sale!

So I ask you… is your mentor supposed to YELL at you?

Isn’t that dangerous? You know, like if you yell at a dog who accidentally poops on the carpet, and then the dog gets confused and is afraid to walk on carpet ever again?

What if I am afraid to walk into the farmer’s market ever again?

Thank goodness I didn’t tell her about the deal I found on okra.

Holy Cow, That’s a Lot of Potatoes, or other pickup lines you should never use.

Dear Chef Kelly,

I am in possession of four pounds of potatoes which will start resembling chia pets in a few days. What should I do with all the potatoes?

I know you will ask what kind of potatoes. They are the kind that have skin and grow in the ground.

Thanks in advance for your culinary guidance,

Carol

I knew Kelly wouldn’t abandon me in my time of need. A quick instant message exchange followed my email.

Chef Kelly: Why do you have four pounds of potatoes? You don’t save money if you have to throw things out!

Carol: I went to buy two baking potatoes and saw that I could get five pounds of potatoes for a dollar more. They. Were. On. Sale.

Chef Kelly: That’s a damn lot of potatoes.

Carol: So what do I do with them?

Chef Kelly: Go to foodnetwork.com and find a recipe.

Carol: Would Yoda tell Luke to go to the internet and learn how to be a Jedi?

Chef Kelly: Oh jeez.

Clearly, Kelly didn’t realize what was involved in agreeing to teach me to cook. I believe she needs some time to adjust.

I decided I want to make potato soup. I went to foodnetwork.com where I found many recipes, all of which called for an understanding of the kitchen that I don’t have.

What is a ricer? Do I have a ricer? Would I know if I did?
An immersion blender? I’m pretty sure I don’t have that.
And what exactly IS a leek?
And homemade chicken stock? Homemade? Are you serious?

Does that mean in order to get potato soup I must start with a chicken? And then what would I do with the chicken? What if I found a chicken recipe that required me to start with potato soup? I picture my kitchen as an M. C. Escher drawing and feel nauseous as I try to get to the microwave and repeatedly end up inside the refrigerator.

I need a different plan.

In Kelly’s early enthusiasm for my potential culinary transformation, she gave me a gift! Alice Waters’ book, The Art of Simple Food, arrived at my doorstep last week. It seems the goal is if I can learn to cook primarily with whole foods and fresh ingredients which are naturally in season, I will find cooking to be easier and the results more satisfying.

It’s hard to see what could be more satisfying than popping a Stouffer’s Family Size Frozen Meatloaf dinner into the microwave, but I’m willing to give Kelly and Alice Waters some latitude.

I open the book and am greeted with pictures of rosemary, tarragon, basil, marjoram, sage, and other herbs. But, wait, why do they look like BUSHES? Where are the shaker jars with labels with powder inside, on sale at Walmart for 3.99 for 16 ounces? I slam the book closed. Am I supposed to grow stuff? Forage? What?!?

I’m thinking Kelly has found the perfect way to get back at me for some trauma I caused her about ten years ago. Though I had long forgotten, apparently Kelly had not, because she reminded me of it last night when we were discussing how to work around the lack of immersion blender problem:

Kelly: I know you have a blender because when I gave you that beanie baby, you stored it inside the blender. That image bothered me for years.

Carol: Oh, yeah. I had forgotten about that.

Kelly: I never did.

Carol: Sorry.

Kelly: So anyway, you do have a blender.

Carol: Yes, but I’ll have to … uh… clean some … stuff… out of it.

Kelly: Oh jeez.

So today I’m off to the grocery store to spend extra money on ingredients to make soup from the potatoes I purchased on sale in order to save money.

I think AIG and Lehman Brothers started with a similar strategy.

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.