The Things I Do for Food

Well, Saturday I did the unthinkable: I used a kitchen appliance other than the microwave. I know, I know, there are inherent dangers involved when setting foot in the kitchen with the actual intention of cooking. But I was not daunted. I did not waver. I happen to have renters insurance, so if I end up burning the whole place down, it’s covered. No worries.

Ok, so it’s not like I was going to war, I was only baking cookies. Making cookies from scratch is one of the few things besides micro waving pizza rolls that I excel at. But don’t let the sweet and tasty nature of the cookies fool you, the entire experience was a journey, and not one to be undertaken by the light of heart. However, if you have the fortitude to read onward, I will take you through that journey, step by step, in hopes that someone out there will learn from my endeavors.

First off, I entered the kitchen and was immediately besieged by a foul stench. The source of this noxious odor was already known to me. A pile of dirty dishes sat in my sink looming above me, casting a shadow over my kitchen much as Mount Vesuvius shadowed the ancient Romans. And as the Fates would have it, my dish washer was broken. Well, it’s always been broken, and I just haven’t gotten around to getting it repaired. Washing dishes by hand isn’t that big of a deal, is it?

So I wielded my mighty sponge and extra strength dishwashing detergent and I ambushed the decaying stack of kitchen debris. However, my best efforts were quickly thwarted when the sink refused to drain and it filled to the brink with hot water. But no, I had come too far to turn back at my first set back, so down went my arm into the scalding pool of water. After a few minutes, I managed to clear out all of Tuesday’s Rice-a-Roni Special that was clogging the pipes. As the water level gradually dropped, I breathed a short sigh of relief. Then onward I pressed scrubbing each dish harder than the last and after a considerable amount of time, and no small amount of vigor on my part, all the dishes were cleared from the sink.

With my first foe skillfully removed from the field of battle, I turned to my next opponent. For once, luck was on my side. I had all the necessary ingredients in my pantry for my recipe, which is great because some of the spices I use cost almost $10 for a .9oz container. And that’s just ridiculous.

Sugar, eggs, shorting and other ingredients piled into a large bowl. I prepared my electric mixer for the one specific task its creators forged it for… mixing. Although my mixer is quite capable, I do wish it had more power. I was thinking it would be so much more efficient if I put in a gasoline powered internal combustion engine to replace the underpowered electric motor it currently sports. Think of it, a mixer with 15 horsepower could do some real damage. It could probably be used to make some baked goods as well from time to time.

I hate flour. It’s white, it’s powdery, and it has a tendency to fall all over my kitchen like the first fall of snow in the winter. But flour is needed to make just about everything in the baking world, so there’s no getting around it. Once I opened the flour container, the fine powder erupted out of the top, spewing forth like the blighted ash from a volcano and covering not only my kitchen, but my face as well. I don’t think I’ve ever had a carbonated beverage explode with such ferocity. I hate flour.

Now that my kitchen looks like what I can only imagine is a Columbian drug cartel’s mixing room, I realized something important: I forgot to preheat the oven. So I set the oven to the usual 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and I began to fill up the cookie sheets. Rather than sit around and wait for the oven to heat up, I turned on my TV and watched some playoff hockey. Ah, there is nothing the reaffirms ones manliness like a good game of hockey. Well, maybe a few rounds of Halo 2 on Xbox Live, but since I don’t own an Xbox, hockey it is.

The oven light turned off alerting me that it was time. I pulled down the door to the unholy furnace and was greeted by waves of heat emanating from liquid hot magma. I tossed the first sheet of cookies inside shuddering at the thought of what strange chemical processes were occurring within my new concoction. A bare nine minutes later I pulled the sheet out and replaced it with the next one. What were once shimmering balls of goo were now flat and rigidly solid. I briefly wondered if I had created a new force of malevolence in the world. But one taste test confirmed it: they were thoroughly cooked, but not to the point of getting burnt, and oh so delicious!

Now the smell of death and decay began to pass from my kitchen. It was replaced with the sweet fragrance of ginger and cinnamon (I was making gingersnaps; it’s an old family recipe). But I was not done yet, there was much cleaning to be done. Bits of cookie dough, flour, sugar, and who knows what else were strewn about my kitchen counter, as well as the floor, the walls and even the ceiling. I don’t know how I got stuff on the ceiling, and to be honest, I don’t think I want to know.

I quickly equipped a dish rag in each hand and utilized my “Super Double Fisted Ninja Scrubbing Attack.” You can laugh all you want, but by adding the word “Ninja” to the name, I succeeded in making the technique twice as effective. You should try it out sometime.

So, two periods after I had set out on my journey (approximately 40 minutes plus TV timeouts), I had reached the end. The cookies were done and sealed away, the kitchen was clean, and I had my revenge that I had sought for so long. Ok, so there wasn’t really any “revenge” going on, I just thought it would go along with the rest of the epic journey motif. Therefore, until I again must hazard the strange and monstrous appliances that haunt my kitchen, I will leave you with this one bit of advice… I hate flour