cooking lessons

When I was younger (junior high, I think?), my mother paid for a few of my siblings and me to take cooking lessons. We never made anything too complicated, but these lessons provided us opportunities to try new foods and become acquainted with the preparation of food. I can remember days where I dreaded going to those lessons, but most of the time, I really enjoyed it.

It was in my teacher's drab, cramped kitchen that I learned the one lesson that has always stuck with me from back then: don't put aluminum foil in the microwave. I had no idea this wasn't supposed to happen until one fateful day when I put a bowl covered in foil into my teacher's microwave. Sure, all those sparks coming out of the foil looked cool, but it probably wasn't too good for the microwave.

Over the years, other unfortunate incidents have taught me important lessons about cooking:

Lesson 2: Macaroni 'n' cheese doesn't have water in it. I was babysitting my cousins when I was in 6th or 7th grade, and decide to cook them macaroni 'n' cheese for dinner. I didn't strain the water out of the macaroni when I was done cooking it, so we all enjoyed macaroni 'n' cheese soup for dinner that night. Disgusting.

Lesson 3: Two wrongs don't make a right. When the little lady and I were first married, she kept pestering me about trying this calzone recipe. The calzones were to contain prosciutto, roasted red peppers and spinach. I find the latter two ingredients particularly disgusting, so I refused to allow her to try the recipe. I finally got sick of the pestering, however, and relented. These calzones were so nasty that even she didn't like them. To teach her a lesson, however, I made her eat them for the next day or two. I haven't gotten too much lip about eating foods I dislike since.

Lesson 4: Table salt and kosher salt are not the same thing. The little lady offered to cook a new chicken recipe that I found on the internet last Sunday. The chicken smelled great, but when I bit into it, it tasted like a salt lick. I asked her if the recipe called for kosher salt, which it did, and which she didn't have. So, instead of a couple teaspoons of kosher salt, the chicken got a couple teaspoons of table salt--at least 20% too much. I can't help but wonder if tablespoons were also substituted for teaspoons, but I guess we'll never know.

Lesson 5: Kitchen equipment can make a difference. I worked as assistant chef in a BYU cafeteria for a semester. I quickly got to the point where the head chef would let me cook whatever I wanted to put on the lunch buffet, which was a great experience for me. My specialty was soups, especially cream soups. I made a mean cream of broccoli soup and a rockin' clam chowder. Unfortunately, however, I've never been able to duplicate my successes outside of that kitchen. Every attempt I've made since then to cook a cream soup or alfredo sauce has completely bombed. I believe the steam-heated giant mixing bowls that I used to cook everything in made the difference--good working space, even heating, etc. I also got one of the nastiest burns of my life on one of those bowls.