The Hampered Chef

Confessions of a "culinary challenged" woman
by Donna Hill

Some people say where there's smoke, there's fire. In my house, where there's smoke, there's dinner. Try as I might, the most basic kitchen skills elude me. Even the vocabulary's confusing. "Blanch" and "julienne" are potential names for my children, not something I'd do to potatoes. A "colander" is where I pencil in my upcoming dinner dates (at restaurants, of course). A "wok" is what I take after I've eaten too much. And "blackened" chicken? That's for novices. I can blacken hot dogs, green beans, and cream-based soups without ever reaching for the fire extinguisher.

It doesn't help that I married into a family that would make Emeril envious. Taking basic ingredients and turning them into fancy French dishes such as coq au vin or vichyssoise comes as easily as breathing for my sisters-in-law. And my mother-in-law can whip up a meal comparable to what's served at any five-star restaurant without batting a spatula. Just the thought of attempting such a feat makes me need to breathe into a brown paper bag. It's intimidating, to say the least.

Early in my marriage, I decided to swallow my pride and ask my mother-in-law for some help. "I'm supposed to fix something for an office party," I told her. "Do you know of anything I can make that doesn't require me to boil, baste, broil, bake, or fry?"

"I've got an easy recipe for a congealed salad," she suggested. "Why don't you try that?"

Congealed salad. Now that sounded like a happy, non-threatening thing to make ("This year's Ms. Congealed Salad winner is . . . "). So pulling out pretzels, Jell-O, cream cheese, and a variety of other ingredients, I followed the recipe to a T, which apparently stood for trouble.

See, I have a fundamental problem with recipes. As a lawyer friend of mine likes to say, they assume facts not already in evidence. With the congealed salad, somehow I was supposed to know intuitively I should spread the cream cheese completely across the pretzels and seal off the edges before I poured the Jell-O over it. Lacking that one vital piece of information, my congealed salad quickly became Jell-O soup, and my congeniality waned.

Other recipes are just as vague. For example, while laboring over an intricate pasta dish—okay, I was boiling spaghetti—I came across the instructions "cook al dente." Just who is Al Dente? And why should I be cooking for him? As a studious former English major, I looked up the phrase. In its original Italian form, it means "to the tooth." I guess that means I'm supposed to cook my pasta so it won't break the teeth of those who eat it. If that's the case, then maybe I should hang a picture of good old Al prominently in my kitchen as a reminder of my main goal in cooking.

Because of incidents like this, I've come up with what I like to call my Irrefutable Recipe Rules. First, all ingredients must be able to be pronounced by anyone with a decent phonics background. Second, the number of ingredients called for can't outnumber my children or the square root of the number of Pampered Chef gadgets I currently own—whichever is less. Third, if the recipe calls for something to be parboiled, nix it. (Just exactly what is parboiling anyway? The word itself sounds inedible.) And here's one last rule of thumb: "Season to taste" means whoever wrote the recipe didn't know how to fix it. Therefore it stands to reason it's not going to taste right when I make it.

I've learned some of my cooking lessons the hard way. For example, it took me three tries to figure out that doubling the oven temperature doesn't cut your cooking time in half. Nuking yeast rolls doesn't cause them to rise faster. And if you bunch ten hamburger patties into an eight-inch skillet, they'll never get done. Fortunately, my husband has a grill, and he's not afraid to use it.

"Maybe you should try some of that once-a-month cooking," suggested a former friend. "You could cook all day Saturday and have enough meals for the entire month." Enough meals indeed, assuming my family would enjoy eating dishes they can't even identify. My regular meals are bad enough. Frozen entrees defrosted in the microwave don't stand a chance.

Fortunately, my gang is learning to adjust. The Food and Drug Administration did us a big favor by making bread and grains the biggest part of the food pyramid, since cold breakfast cereal's fair game for breakfast, lunch, and dinner around my house. My eldest daughter, on a quest to prove that man can, indeed, live by bread alone, has become an expert in warming up rolls. Just yesterday I found her in the kitchen preheating the oven.

"Whatcha doin'?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," she replied, trying to hide the oven behind her five-foot-six, 90-pound frame. "Just heating up some rolls."

"Do you want me to do that while you finish your math?" I asked, ever the good mother.

"No, no, that's fine," she assured me quickly. "I can work a problem or two while they're cooking."

Secretly relieved I wasn't going to have to broil her Brown 'N Serves, I wandered off to find something less dangerous to do.

At least now I'm willing to admit my limitations. In the past, transferring a bucket of KFC to my own platter before taking it to potluck dinners became an art. Combining cut-up carrots with canned soup made my "homemade" chicken soup famous. My cover as a developing culinary queen was blown, though, after hosting our annual family Christmas buffet a couple years ago.

"This turtle cheesecake is delicious," commented my sister. "Did you make it?"

"Mmm hmmm," I mumbled noncommittally, feigning food in my mouth.

Then the truth reared its ugly head. "How in the world did you get all these little pieces of wax paper between the slices?" my sister asked. My charade was over.

What I lack in cooking expertise I make up for in other ways. I can wash, dry, iron, and put away clothes faster than you can say "fricassee." The faucets in my bathroom shine as brilliantly as Julia Child's copper-bottomed kettles. And my inadequacy as a cook is overshadowed by my intense desire to organize my kitchen—so if I do happen to want to, say, fry up some macaroni and cheese, I've got 12 pots and 8 Tupperware containers to do the job. …

It looks as though I'm going to be culinary challenged for the rest of my life. …I could go on and on about my cooking inabilities. Or I could let my husband explain my limitations. After hearing me say I might have used a bit of literary license with this article, he read it and quietly asked, "So what part of this isn't true?" But my smoke alarm just went off, which no doubt means it's time to pull my no-bake cheesecake out of the oven.

Donna Hill, a freelance writer, lives with her husband and five children in Arkansas.

Starving for a Friend?
How to survive a friendship famine
by Rhonda Rhea

A few years before I married, I moved a couple hours away from what had always been "home." I started scoping out the new turf in the most logical locale: the mall. One day, while walking down the main drag at a pretty good clip, I popped my purse-sized lotion out and started thumping the bottle so I could take care of my dry hands while still mapping out the lay of the mall. Thump, thump, thump—nothing. More thumps. Still nothing. I examined the bottle and found that bothersome circular piece of cardboard stuck over the opening. (Can anyone tell me what that's for?)

I figured a little squeeze would loosen it, but it didn't. So I gave it a big squeeze. The bottle blew the cardboard off like a baby bazooka! Giant lotion bombs were lobbed all over my face, hanging from my lashes, globbing my hair—not my favorite Kodak moment.

The worst of it was there was no one there with whom to laugh, no friend to make fun of me. Laughing with a friend over a lotion explosion is a hoot. Laughing alone with lotion dripping out your nose causes other shoppers to move swiftly to the other side of the mall. I needed a bud.

That's when it hit me. I was face to lotion-covered face with a friendship famine. I don't know when I've felt more lonely. Soft, but lonely.

Young or "mature," single or married, we all face times in our life when we hunger for a friend. Life's changing circumstances can result in lean friendship times. A job change, a new location, a marriage, a divorce, a death—even a difference of opinions or faith—can throttle a relationship and launch an anxious time of relational famine. What can we do when we find ourselves starving for a friend?

Pity or Party?
Even popular author and speaker Patsy Clairmont has felt friendship-starved. It's tough to imagine an upbeat people-magnet such as Patsy ever feeling lonely. But in her book Sportin' a 'Tude, she describes her loneliness as "a dull ache, a sadness, a feeling of being forgotten." She states that when she's feeling neglected, she becomes a prime candidate for self-pity to visit.

Clairmont warns that self-pity can be poisonous. Instead of responding in an appropriate way, "we indulge our loneliness until it becomes a melancholy mindset, a distorted way of thinking, seeing, and feeling. At times we entertain our sadness and become dependent on our despondency to extend to us a sick sort of comfort." Instead, Patsy shows us that just as a famine can lead to a more intense search for food, loneliness has the exciting potential to guide us to a new friend. She makes the circumstance sound like an adventure. Move over, Indiana Jones! We're on a friendship quest!

Relocating and Refriending
Laura Jones was accustomed to friend and family feasts. But she experienced a heartfelt loneliness when she left her family and friends in Texas and headed to her new job in St. Louis without knowing a soul.

Laura started attending every singles' gathering available and introducing herself to people there. She invested time in getting to know them—and now she's even investing time in helping to plan some class events. Her investments have paid off in some close friendship dividends.

Laura realized a bud might not just pop up like a toaster tart. She was ready to do the work to search out a friend. A reading group, a craft class, or some other gathering of people with like interests might also be great places to meet a new pal.

Fast-Food Friends
I've recently discovered there's a season of life that unfolds entirely in the car. When my five children became old enough to have "lives," mine seemed to disappear into my minivan. "Living" in my car can make for some scant friendship times. When every minute is in-vested in the kids' schedules, there's no time left for lunch with a friend or even a chat on the phone.

But I met Cindy at my son's junior-high basketball game. I'd been busy delivering my kids in 14 different directions. So had Cindy. We found we had a lot in common.

Even though my schedule leaves little room for socializing, finding other moms with the same busyness, the same interests, and the same "bleacher-bun syndrome" has provided a great way to keep my schedule without leaving out companionship. I've seen other moms running in similar circles who've found understanding friends at ballet recitals, baseball games, band concerts, and play groups.

While many of us struggle when our kids require every moment of free time, others struggle when work devours every spare minute. And many of us grapple with both. During those busy times, we often zip through the drive-thru for some fast food. In the same way, when we don't have time for the most intimate friendship moments, there's always time to squeeze in a nice exchange along the way, just as Cindy and I did. But we have to be on the lookout for those opportunities and snarf them up. It can be as energizing as a burger and fries—and without the fat!

Battle of the Blues
Gina Waits has a toddler and two school-aged children. When she found herself so wrapped up in kids and babies that she was talking baby-talk to her husband, she experienced a real craving for a bud. But with the little ones requiring so much of her time and energy, searching one out has been a problem. No matter how she's tried to find the time, she's found it too tough to build real friendships in this season of life. She's been tempted to sink into some friendship blues.

To fend off the melancholies, Gina keeps a stash of photos of friends. On lonely days, she pulls them out. They help her remember she's had some great friendships in the past—just in case she's tempted to think her friendship famine's somehow about her and not her situation. The photos encourage her to keep looking ahead.

When the kids are a little older and there are fewer demands, Gina will be able to call an acquaintance from PTA to meet her at the mall. … Just knowing she'll be able to do some things in the future gives her a good dose of hope while she endures her lean friendship time now.

Don't Dessert
I noticed a lady eating alone in a restaurant not long ago. She didn't have anyone with her to tell her she had that spinach-in-the-teeth thing happening. I wanted to tell her, but that's really not the kind of thing you tell a perfect stranger. When I saw her head for the ladies' room, I was sure she'd take care of it while she was there. She did—but now she had toilet paper trailing behind one shoe!

I tried to get to her. I'm not sure what I was going to say: "Hi, my name's Rhonda and you've got toilet paper on your shoe." Probably not the most impressive social contact. But she was too fast for me anyway. Before I could get there, she was out the door, toilet paper fluttering after her. I would've had to tackle her in the parking lot to befriend her. The real puzzler was that she left without even having dessert—and the special was fudgecake! Now that's sad.

I think the woman needed a friend that day. Maybe she needed to stick around long enough to allow for a friendship to develop.

The next time you're starved for a friend, remember to look toward the friendship opportunity that may be ready to tackle you. Don't give up on finding a bud. Hanging in there is like sticking around for dessert. And good friends are better than fudgecake.

Rhonda Rhea, a speaker and freelance writer, lives in Missouri.

Three Little Words

By Camerin Courtney

June 13, 2001

When I answered the phone recently and simply heard sobbing, I knew immediately who it was—Susan, my close friend whose marriage is hanging in a precarious balance between a long road to recovery from her husband's emotional affair and ending altogether in divorce.

Over the past few months I've listened to her, cried with her, prayed my guts out for her, played with her, and held her in those moments of desperation when none of the above would even come close to touching the depth of her pain and heartache. It's been a gruelling … and surprisingly precious time. In moments of raw emotion, we've had conversations about love and life that have knocked my socks off. We've had honest and vulnerable talks about growing up as people pleasers, fears of doing life alone, being groomed by society for a wedding instead of a marriage, and feeling the need to have a spouse to fit into [our] circles. It's been strange and somewhat liberating to have a friendship this messy.

In the midst of this mess, …I sometimes wonder why should it be unmarried me to help someone who needs such marriage expertise right now. But I'm beginning to see God’s "mysterious ways" at work as our contrasting perspectives have taught us both some important life lessons.

Susan thinks I'm brave for doing life alone—and I think she's brave for doing all she can to mend her broken marriage when so many would bolt from such a tough situation. At the same time, Susan's seeing that if it comes down to separation or divorce, she can make it alone—because if I can, anyone can! And I'm learning through her struggles the vital importance of making wise marriage choices. Susan's also mentioned how much she appreciates the fact that, unlike her married friends and family members, I'm available almost anytime to talk on the phone or meet for coffee if she needs some spur-of-the-moment support. I like this new positive spin on my "available" status.

During this difficult time for Susan—of counselling sessions, arguments and anger, good days and tearful days, two steps forward and three steps back—she's been told by nearly all the handful of friends she's shared her struggles with to take good care of herself, to take time to do things that make her happy. It's her response to this good advice that's broken my heart most. With tearful eyes and a defeated look, she whispered to me one day, "I don't know what makes me happy. I'm beginning to realize I don't really know who I am."

I was surprised by this admission. I'd always seen Susan as put together, friendly, responsible, and outgoing. But when she explained that she spent most of her and her husband's three-year dating relationship investing in his life and dreams, how since then they've decided to let him pursue a degree while she's put her work aspirations on hold, and how he's called the shots for everything from dinner decisions to money matters, I realized Susan had fallen into the common trap of losing herself for the sake of love. A trap I've nearly fallen into a few times myself.

I've watched friends get married because it was easier to walk down the aisle than to chart life's path or to dig deep and figure out just who it is God made them to be. And I've fretted for some who married so young, becoming a "we" before they had much of a chance to figure out "me." I think about my own Mr. Close Enough, who I begrudgingly walked away from in my early twenties, and wonder who I'd be now if I hadn't had to do the hard work of making some life decisions of my own over the past years.

I'm not saying all who marry young are doomed or that all who marry at all are avoiding reality. Most assuredly, there are healthy, happy marriages in abundance. But there are also a lot of people getting hitched because it seems easier to become Wife or Husband and soon after Mom or Dad than doing the difficult work of growing up and growing into the specific roles, ministries, paths, and professions to which God calls each of us. I'll admit it, at times marriage has seemed like an escape when it becomes too tough, too personal, too scary to mine the talents, abilities, purpose, and passions God's planted in my heart.

It's also tempting for us single people to put our life on hold until we can assume the easy-to-define, everyone's-doing-it role of Wife or Husband. But in talking with Susan, I've realized afresh that the three little words many of us long to hear most—"I love you"—can be robbed of much of their richness and meaning when we haven't first asked ourselves a different but just as vital three little words—"who am I?"

Susan's figuring out the hard way that two half-people don't make a whole, healthy marriage. And I'm still learning the hard way, too, that one half-person makes for a miserable single life. And anyway, God doesn't make half-people and his promises don't come packaged for pairs. God completes us. Each of us. And it's only when we allow him to do so that we find true joy and the abundant life to which he's called us.

As for Susan, she's now taking some classes to help figure out what gives her joy. And me, I'm learning through our friendship that I'm an encourager. Thanks to Susan, I'm getting a lot of practice. I love cheering her on as she comes into her own more and more. I hope someday in the future to be joined in this joy by her husband, as he realizes what a gem he's married to. Until then, I know God is guiding this caterpillar as she spins a cocoon, and I eagerly anticipate the day when she'll emerge a beautiful butterfly whole, confident and free to fly in the direction he beckons her.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 689