A Most Unwanted Promotion

In the last couple years, I’ve made two very big mistakes. In 2013 I graduated from college. In the fall of that same year, I moved out of state.

Depending on how you view these things, graduation and moving out of my parents’ home may not seem like mistakes. Now, try looking at it through the eyes of a cooking failure. What do college and living at home have in common? Easily accessible food cooked daily by people (be it cafeteria workers or my mom) who aren’t me. Leaving both sources of food meant I was now in charge of the meals. Here are a few things to know about me to explain why this was a bit of a waking nightmare:

1. My legacy in the kitchen is that of grandiose culinary disasters and a persistent inability to understand the basics of cooking. Case in point, the sugar-salt confusion of ’98 involving a triple-batch of chocolate chip cookies salty enough to cause dehydration.
2. Out of respect for said legacy and my shortcomings in the kitchen, I have avoided all cooking and baking. The occasional Thanksgiving dish forced by my mother or weirdly optimistic personal attempt at boxed brownies is the most food experience I’ve gotten in the last several years.
3. I love to eat. I am a fan of food. I’m hungry often.

Graduation and moving landed me the role of head chef. And it was a problem. I had taken care of everything I needed for the move, but it wasn’t until I stood in my new kitchen staring at white cabinets, an empty refrigerator, and an old school oven that I realized I’d overlooked how I was going to feed myself.

And so, after a month or two of denial (during which I subsisted off frozen dinners, cereal, PB&J, and fast food), my cooking journey began. Unsurprisingly, plenty of things went wrong.

As making food properly is something that apparently takes time to learn, plenty of things are still going wrong. I decided to write about them as a tribute to the struggle in my life that is cooking and the potential progress I make. I have hopes to one day be a much better, more confident cook who can laugh at these mistakes in hindsight as a culinary master… or something like that. Until then, I’ll keep at it in the kitchen, and we’ll see how it goes.