If ever there were a title for my unwritten biography, this would be one of the first runner ups. It is a tragedy and a curse that the women in my family are usually inept at cooking. When you combine this with our natural affinity to not follow simple instructions my brothers and I might have been doomed in the kitchen had it not been for the simple saving grace of my eldest brother. The gentle giant that is my eldest brother has always been something of a mystery to my parents. The giant stands at just over six feet tall while my parents cannot boast anything taller than five foot, five inches between the two of them. If you inspect my grandparents the conversation becomes even more confusing as my father is the tallest member of his family by quite a few inches (my grandmother was four foot two) and my mother's parents weren't that tall either. In fact, if the giant didn't look exactly like my father, except for being eight inches taller) one might question my brother's paternity (I sometimes wonder if he came from BFG). In addition to his height, the giant has one more mysterious quality which we question- unlike the rest of my family he can cook.
Growing up he liked to experiment in the kitchen, sometimes with my Mother's knowledge. We'd wait until date night and then we would have a party in the kitchen- the Giant would experiment, Jip would be at the laptop playing DJ, Baby would be playing, Boyo would be doing whatever it was that he did, and I would be on damage control- i.e. I cleaned up. We would look forward to date night with the enthusiasm that most children would wait for Christmas because as soon as the parental units were gone we would have a dance party in the kitchen. If the parental units ever discovered what we did while they were out, they never let on and never complained, so long as the Giant didn't go crazy with his creations.
In person the giant is kindly, careful, friendly, and always a gentleman. In the kitchen he is pushy, controlling, and orderly, if not clean. We, his siblings, might not forgive him for his culinary tyranny if not for his creations and the constitutional rule that anything edible must be shared by all parties. For the most part this worked out for as the giant is an expert at making pasta, seafood, casseroles, breads, desserts, meat and potatoes, salads, vegetarian, potpies, regular pies, cakes, cookies, meat lovers, porkless, porkful, soufflés- if you can think of it he can make it, with one minor exception- from a box, simple as that, macaroni and cheese.
1. 1. Undercook the noodles.
2. Overcook the noodles.
3. Burn the noodles.
4. Scald the noodles.
5. Sautee the noodles.
6. Forget about the noodles.
7. Set off the smoke alarm.
8. Accidentally leave the lid off and get dog hair in it.
9. Rinse the noodles too much.
10. Forget to rinse them at all.
11. Use goat milk.
12. Use fake butter.
13. Use water instead of milk.
14. Use salt instead of butter.
15. Add chili pepper.
16. Spill in whole peppercorn by mistake.
17. Add a chili pepper.
18. Wash out the butter.
19. With soap.
20. Leave the top off and someone tossed in a toy car.
30. Add the cheese too early.
31. Add the cheese too late.
32. Forget to mix the cheese.
33. Drop the package for the cheese into the pot.
34. Drop the box into the pot.
35. Mix it in anyways.
36. Forget to mix the butter.
37. Try to mix the cheese, noodles, butter, milk, and hot water altogether.
38. Try to mix them all separately.
39. Stack them like a seven layer dip.
40. Bake it in the oven.
41. Forget the cheese.
42. Forget the butter.
43. Forget the milk.
44. Forget the water.
45. Forget the noodles.
46. Forget to turn off the stove.
47. Forget to turn on the fan.
48. Forget to drain the water.
49. Serve it up like crunchy cereal.
50. Serve it like soup.
50. Serve it like soup.
Now it stands to reason that most of this probably didn’t happen. After all I am his sister and I have to rib him as best I can from four states away, but in the interest of truthfulness you must know I could not have exaggerated everything, right? Anyway you can imagine some of the ways, and a great many that I am sure that you can’t, he can ruin macaroni and cheese with the best- or worst- of them. I like to think that he has trouble following directions, like most of the engineers in our family, but he can follow recipes as well as his preferred method of making it up as he goes along. The giant is the only person I know who can make a mistake while cooking and it turns out fabulously. Most everything I know about cooking I learned from him and no matter how I try he could whip the pants off me in the kitchen. It’s not fair. And it never will be. Except for the fact that I can make mac and cheese. And so we suffer through it, his chicken that is so amazing it almost tastes like pork, his spicy chicken soup that could cure any cold, his beefy casseroles, his surprisingly good lentil chip dip, and his beyond heavenly shrimp sauce. Hmmmm…. When people ask me what I miss most about California I say good food. I’m sure they assume I mean my favorite restaurants, but really I mean the giant’s cooking… with the exception of macaroni and cheese.
I laughed and I cried reading this. I appreciate your writing.
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