Why I Will Never Be a Domestic Goddess

Food is important. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. If that is true, I'd better get rich quick, or I might spend the rest of my life as an old maid. Good thing my boyfriend likes Hardee's and Waffle House so much. One of my new year's resolutions this year is to learn how to cook. My friend Katie got me two cookbooks for Christmas, and we have already attempted one recipe, which turned out to be pretty good. (See my mom's blog, humberfourthgrade.blogspot.com, for full details of their ten-day visit with me here in Spain).

Now, food in itself is not a foreign concept to me. Remember, there are two different realms of the act of food consumption: that of the actual preparation of the food, aka cooking, and that of the actual consuming, aka eating. I love to eat, and I consider myself quite good at it, as my boyfriend can certainly attest to. I devote hours everyday to thinking about food and its many varieties.

Cooking, to me, is like the German language. I know a few words and phrases, but having a complete conversation is thoroughly out of my grasp. For example, "Guten tag" (trans. good day) is like your basic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When all else fails, shout "Guten tag!" smile, nod, and then run away. Pretty cowardly I guess, but a good alternative when you have no other alternatives. One step up is the "Wo ist die Bushaltestelle" (trans. where is the bus stop) which is your simple spaghetti in tomato sauce (the sauce being of the Ragu variety, of course). Simple enough, right? And finally, my favorite, the multi-purpose "Du bist ein dum Kopf" (trans. you are a stupid head) which would be brownies out of a box. Brownies are pretty hard to screw up, especially when all you have to do is add oil, water, and an egg. Even if they don't cook all the way through, the gooey brownie mix is still good licked off a spoon. I am proud to say that I can make a mean batch of Betty Crocker brownies, though the best of what I have produced couldn't hold a candle to Katie's brownies. Here's a list of a few other things I can make: macaroni and cheese, toast and jelly, and strangely enough, fried plantains. Those are hit-or-miss because I still haven't perfected the art of choosing good plantains.

And there you have it. The extent of my cooking repertoire. I guess I could blame my genes for it, because my mom has never had much of an interest in cooking either, nor her mom before her. However, now that I am no longer in college and have access to a full kitchen, my excuses for not being more creative are running low. I have absolutely no idea how to cook any meat products, casseroles, vegetable dishes, or (heaven help me) desserts (excluding aforementioned brownies from a box).

There is one aspect of food preparation that I have mastered. That is, the art of heating stuff up. I am the queen of the microwave. I can make baked potatoes, hot dogs, eggs, you name it, in the microwave. I don't consider that cooking in the least bit. It's more like cheating. Using my language analogy, microwaving is like plugging a whole German paragraph into freetranslation.com and in two seconds, Ding! The English version pops out, albeit a bit funky in places, but usually pretty edible.