The Next Julia Child

"I was thirty two when I started cooking. Up until then I just ate."

                                                                                   ~ Julia Child

After reading the quote above, I have decided that I am going to be the next Julia Child.  I'm thirty two; just like Julia was when she started cooking.  Also like Julia, up until now I just ate food, I didn't cook it (unless all other options and resources had been absolutely exhausted). 

Don't get me wrong, I have a lovely kitchen in my home.  I decorated it myself in shades of turquoise and blue-green.  I have a complete set of peacock blue Fiestaware in there, complete with serving bowls, silverware, and a matching three-piece cannister set on the counter.  My mother has seen to it that it is stocked with all manner of cooking apparatus.  I have a toaster oven and Crock Pot, a wok and a stock pot, baking sheets and meatloaf pans.  It is fully loaded with everything a young cook could ever possibly need.  I've just never felt the need to spend any time in there beyond fixing a bowl of cereal or making a couple pieces of toast.



When I was younger, I loved baking and would trash my mother's kitchen making cookies, cakes, and pies.  During a brief period in my twenties, while I was dating a single father, I tried my hand at being June Cleaver by cooking pot roasts, pork chops, and chicken dinners.  Much like the relationship, most of my June Cleaver culinary experiences did not have a happy ending.  Something would always go a little awry, either the pot roast would be dry or the chicken would be undercooked.  Don't even ask about the pork chops!  I'm just lucky no one died of trichinosis.

Now in my thirties, I have new culinary challenges.  My honey fancies himself a good cook,
certainly a better cook than me at any rate, so he tends to dominate the kitchen.  He's done most of the cooking since he moved in with me and he's right.  He's a really good cook.  He makes excellent Mexican and Italian meals.  He loves spicy food.

At the start of the week, my honey decided to invite his parents over for dinner on Tuesday.  We decided to make lasagna because his father announced that he had a hankering for Italian.  We went to the store and bought all the supplies and were ready to cook.  Then, life decided to interfere with our plans.  There was a death in my family, a cousin of my mother's passed away unexpectedly.  The viewing was scheduled for the night we were supposed to have his parents over, so we had to reschedule.  I would have the funeral to go to the following day, so we rescheduled for Thursday.

After getting home from the funeral and the wake, I decided to begin my culinary career as the next Julia Child. We would get the lasagna together the night before so that all we'd have to do the next day was bake and serve.  Boy, am I glad we did that!  It was a disaster.

Let me start by saying it was entirely my fault.  I misread the label on the jar of spaghetti sauce.  The jar said 1 lb. 8 oz., but all I saw was the 8 oz. part.  Since my lasagna recipe called for 24 oz. of spaghetti sauce, I added three jars of sauce.  For those of you not skilled at measurement conversions, 1 lb. 8 oz. is exactly 24 ounces.  I put in three times the amount of spaghetti sauce we needed!

Of course, I didn't realize my mistake until after we put the lasagna in the oven.  Bake covered for thirty minutes, uncovered for ten minutes to melt the cheese on top, and out of the oven comes... Well, I guess lasagna soup would best describe the concoction that came out of the oven.  My honey let it sit for ten minutes and then cut himself a piece, ate it, and pronounced it delicious.  God love him!  He dug into my lasagna soup concoction with gusto.

Not that I didn't believe him, (Okay, I didn't believe him.  The man's in love.  He'll say anything to make me happy.) but I went to the store and got the fixings for a new lasagna.  While I was gone, he cut up the rest of the culinary calamity and put it in tupperware containers so he could take it to work for lunch.  He's going to be so sick of lasagna by the weekend that he won't want Italian for a month after this is over.

We're going to try again with the lasagna tonight.  If this one doesn't work out, I'm going to get  a pan of Stouffer's lasagna from the freezer section and call it a day.

Thankfully, my honey doesn't seem to care that I can't cook.
Gee, I wonder why?