My Ugly Secret is Revealed

What I am about to reveal is REALLY shameful. I hesitated blogging about it because it is soooooo shameful. I am putting myself in The Cone of Safety. What is The Cone of Safety you ask? The cone of safety means that no matter what I say I can't be judged or condemned. Anyone can invoke The Cone of Safety for whatever situation may arise. I encourage use of The Cone of Safety. So here goes.........I..........can't..........cook.

This is shameful because I have two kids. I have been a mom for almost 16 years and I can't cook. Now, don't get me wrong, I can handle a few of the basics, but that's about it. My mother just never taught me how to cook. When I was a teenager she went into depression and started living in her room. What did we eat? I'll tell you what...a lot of Hamburger Helper. One of my sisters feels that this stuff is so vile that even the smell of it nauseates her. Ramen noodles was another family favorite.

Anyway I am so sick of eating the same old stuff. My mom got me a cookbook for my birthday. So I decided that I needed to improve my cooking skills. So spent some time looking through my cookbook. I LOVE this cookbook. It teaches a lot of basics and there is even a section that teaches you how to properly select fresh fruits and vegetables. Which I really needed. I will now reveal another shameful secret(I am still under the cone of safety). My nine year old daughter usually chooses fruit when we go grocery shopping. I know.....it's mortifying.

I decided to start with something simple like bacon and eggs. I can cook scrambled eggs all day long. The DQ and I both love over easy eggs, so I wanted to learn how to cook those. I can't even remember if I have ever attempted to make bacon before. So I bought bacon and eggs at the store. I read the package directions on the bacon which said to cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Well, it didn't look done to me so I cooked it a little longer. Let me tell you that this bacon was so hard I think I lost some tooth enamel. Then I decided that instead of cooking the eggs in butter that I would just use the left over bacon grease. Big mistake. The eggs were sooo rubbery. Bless my children they didn't say a word. We all ate the rock hard bacon and the rubbery eggs.

I didn't let this get me down. I tried making eggs again the next day. This time I cooked them in butter as my cookbook suggested. They were much better. I haven't tried the bacon again yet, but I am not giving up. This week I decided to try one of my 20 minute recipes which does not require any cooking. It was called Southwestern chicken wraps. All I needed was flour tortilla's, lettuce, tomato, chicken, sour cream and guacamole. So I came home from work today and pulled out the lettuce and tomato to chop. I chopped up the lettuce and had the DQ help slice the tomato. I went into the frig looking for the chicken. I couldn't find it. I asked Sissy if she had seen the chicken. She said it was in the frig and comes over and pulls out the raw chicken breasts that I had bought. I told her that I had purchased some precooked chicken to make the wraps.

Guess where I found the chicken. In the freezer. It was of course completely frozen. I had already prepared the other ingredients so I knew I HAD to make the chicken wraps. Hence, a bright idea pops into my nutty mind. I will steam the chicken until it defrosts. This probably would not have been a bad idea had I not used a plastic colander with a metal pot. I put just a little water in the bottom of the pot and brought it to a boil. Then, me being the extremely intelligent college educated person that I am, I put the chicken in the PLASTIC colander and set it on top of the pot. Yep, you can probably figure out what happens next. A few minutes later I smell the smell of plastic burning. My colander is melting onto the metal pot. I remove the colander from the pot and got out a skillet. What did I learn today? That if your teenage daughter inadvertently puts your precooked chicken in the freezer, simply unthaw it on low heat....in....a....skillet.

After the melting plastic fiasco, things went pretty well from there. The girls loved the wraps and it was something easy and new and pretty healthy. Of course I didn't actually cook anything except to defrost the chicken.(Which I cannot be judged for as I am still in The Cone of Safety)