I received an invitation to a bridal shower the other day. And tucked inside was what has recently become in vogue, a card on which for me to write down my favorite recipe for the bride.
Well, this leaves me with a dilemma.
I still have the recipe “Betty Jo’s Burnt Toast.” I’ve tried it a few times, but frankly it makes me too nervous. I’m always afraid the toaster oven will burst into flames.
And then there is “Brenda’s Boiled Water.” This seems like a cinch. But as you may already know, a watched pot never boils, and I just don’t have time to stand around.
Now, I can cook taters. Fried, mashed, stewed, baked, cheesed, garlicked, you name it.
I can bake, broil, roast, fry, and use chicken in creamed sauces.
I make a mean spaghetti sauce.
T-bone steaks, watch out.
I can cook a pone of cornbread.
Green beans, field, blackeye, crowder and icky green peas, I can cook.
Biscuits taste good, but I can’t get them to stick together.
I see a recipe in a magazine and the title sounds good. The magazines says something like “Throw Together Dinner in Eight Easy Minutes.”
As follows:
Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.
I can do that. Well, technically, I can’t. My digital thingy that controls the 0 and the 9 won’t work, so I have to put it on 448. Then the oven beeps at me and changes it to 450, as if to say, “Fool! I don’t do 448!”
But by the time I start reading the ingredients, I quickly see something I don’t only not have, I have never even heard of the ingredient in all my 59 years.
I quietly close the magazine, hunt up Domino’s coupons, give them a quick call, and pick up my latest book of fiction to read until the pizza arrives.
I suspect the recipe is fiction, too.
Maybe I can write on the bride-to-be’s recipe card about “whop ’em” biscuits.
You know you have to hit the cardboard exactly right on the precise edge of the counter or you won’t be able to open them correctly.
That right there could be a chef’s worse nightmare, that could.