I Cry When I Cook For a Reason Dammit

Studly wanted his anniversary gift to be a home cooked meal. When he said that, I almost broke up with him just to avoid cooking.

Some people are naturally born chefs that can make mouthwatering dishes. Some people spend a lot of time learning to be good chefs. Some people spend a reasonable amount of time becoming acceptable cooks. Some people are able to microwave a fairly decent meal. I am none of those people.

This looks delightful! If I attempted to cook it, you’d have food poisoning at best and instantaneous death at worst (or maybe it’s the other way around)…

I’ve ruined canned soup before. CANNED SOUP. Not only are there instructions on the side, it’s all of three steps:

1) Open can
2) Pour soup and water into pot
3) Heat

I know you’re dying to know which step I screwed up – the answer is #2. I poured soup into the pot and didn’t add water. Not because I forgot, but because the instructions on the side didn’t tell me to. How pathetic is that!?

Turns out that the instructions on how to heat and the ones telling you to add water are in two different places. That’s my only defense. I totally planned on adding a picture here, but forgot to take one. I’ll let your imagination fill in the blanks.

I’m the same woman who didn’t add seasoning to my meat for a year in college because I didn’t know I had to. This is what happens when your parent feeds you only fast food, you have no idea how to do anything on your own.

Granny told me to make Studly “Engagement Chicken” but I think if I tried, it would end up being “Dumped Chicken”

These days I’ve learned to add water to my condensed chicken noodle soup, and salt and pepper to my turkey meat but I’m still no Gordon Ramsey. Hell, I’m not even that good at microwaving things! But for love I decided to try to cook a full meal. It was a god damn disaster.

Studly was traveling (again) during our anniversary, so I rescheduled it for the day he was set to come home, three days after the actual anniversary. I went all out – dinner would be steak with mashed sweet potatoes, glazed carrots and roasted tomatoes. I worked out when to do everything and prepped the day before. Dessert would be a tunnel of love fudge cake. I hid his gifts all over my apartment and drew a treasure map so he could find them all. The final gift he would find would be me, wearing something that I hoped would make his jaw drop. *Sigh*, it was such a good plan.

I made the cake the day before and right in the middle of mixing the ingredients Studly called. His grandmother and mom had decided to surprise him the night he came home…with a special dinner.

“What?”

“Babe, they didn’t know you were planning an anniversary dinner for me.”

“The hell they didn’t! I told your mom about it two weeks ago!”

“Oh. Maybe she forgot.”

**Long awkward silence where he waits for me to say I’ll postpone or that everything is OK, meanwhile I’m waiting for him to say he’ll skip their dinner to celebrate our anniversary**

In the end, we agreed that he would sit through their dinner and then would rush to get to ours just in time to eat. I should have fucking rescheduled or just plain cancelled it and told him to cook his own damn dinner.

The night of the dinner, I started cooking the items that would take longer – like boiling the sweet potatoes and roasting the tomatos. He was supposed to be at my place at 7pm, which is how I determined when to start everything. At 7:30 the steaks were done and had cooled down significantly, the plates were on the table with a candle waiting to be lit. I was changed into a dress he’d never seen me in, staring at the wall and trying not to cry since I didn’t want to ruin my mascara. When he rushed in at 7:45, he gave me a chagrined look and then brightened and stuck his finger in the mashed sweet potatoes to give it a taste.

All hell broke loose. There was shouting and crying and threatening of bodily harm if he touched my dinner, since he’d forfeited his when he came to our anniversary late. He apologized for a good ten minutes before I would let him take a single bite. Unfortunately, that’s when we discovered that despite trying my best, I’d ruined another meal. The sweet potatoes were not sweet enough, I’d added an overwhelming amount of thyme to the tomatos and the steak was badly undercooked. The carrots turned out excellent though.

So that was his punishment, I watched him eat every bite of his dinner (except parts of the steak that were clearly raw). He choked it down to please me, since I regularly eat my own cooking I’m used to terrible meals, but one thing I’m not that bad at is dessert – I’m a whiz baker. That’s why I cried when I bit into my cake and it was thick and terrible. Studly tried to eat his small slice with two glasses of milk, but it was dense and so fudge-y that we couldn’t swallow.

Next year I’ll pull a Mrs. Doubtfire and pay for someone else to make a good meal that I can plate and take credit for. Or better yet, he can make me dinner and I’ll be late!