Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain

One of my goals for The Hiatus -- as I'm now taking to calling my soon-to-end sabbatical from working -- was to learn how to cook. Or at least learn how to appear like I can cook.

There's a certain amount of pressure a Type-A young woman feels these days to be a ridiculously shrewd career person, but in her spare time also manage to be athletic, funny, pretty, well-groomed, environmentally conscious and above all, able to whip up a fantastic gourmet meal using just the ingredients in her almost bare kitchen cabinet. Er, or maybe that's just me. No -- wait a second. Part of that might be my Type-A neuroses, but the stuff about the cooking is definitely not just me, as evidenced by the very astute writers of this here blog.

So, the past few months I've been trying to learn how to cook new things. And, although this is great in furthering my goal to learn how to appear like I can cook, even more importantly, it takes up a lot of time. A lot of time. Because I approach cooking like any other unemployed Type-A neurotic. There's perusing recipes, reading recipe reviews, shopping for ingredients, going to a different store for supposedly superior ingredients, second guessing the wisdom of selecting that particular recipe in the first place, etc. That takes up a lot of time, which is good, because I have a lot of time on my hands to fill.

Half the time I undertake to cook something, I buy all the ingredients, and then they stay in the refrigerator for days because I get sidetracked. Okay, truthfully, by the time I run around and buy all the ingredients, I've gone to multiple stores and am too tired to make anything. So, a lot of the cooking efforts never make it past the grocery-purchasing-stage.

The other half the time I decide to cook something, I fall victim to the deadly coupling of arrogance and laziness, with a healthy splash of stupidity for good measure.

First, the Arrogance -- even though I can't cook, I'm convinced that I can somehow modify the recipe slightly so that it will be even better than anyone ever imagined. This frequently involves me scrounging through my spice cupboard for that little special extra ingredient which I have no doubt will bring the recipe to the next level and make Thomas Keller come running to my apartment, like the pathetic chef that he is, begging me to please just let him in on The Secret, just this one time, of how I make my mashed potatoes so deliciously mashed potato-y. At the moment, the special ingredient of choice is The Shallot, a teeny-tiny baby onion that I somehow went 32 years without using, and which I now throw into everything to make up for lost time.

Next, the Laziness. For example, if a recipe requires something as complicated as using separate bowls for ingredients, sifting, cooling, candy thermometers, or buying a special spice of which you use only 1/4 tsp, then I just skip that step, because they can't possibly expect that anyone will actually go to that kind of effort. The exception to this rule is if a recipe calls for using a food processor, in which case I'll run to get my heavy processor and use it to chop anything and everything in sight. Food processors are fun.

Finally, there's the Stupidity. Inevitably, whenever I veer off recipe with extra spices and/or skipped steps, whatever I'm making turns out icchy. Yet, it must be sheer stupidity that keeps pushing me to continue to alter recipes at will, and expect them to turn out well. Of course, I always blame the recipe. (Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on Martha Stewart.)

You can imagine my frustration, then, when tonight I attempted to make a chocolate mousse pie, following the recipe almost to the letter. (Well, not 100%, but close.) And it turned out like liquefied mud, only less tasty. I don't understand how mixing chocolate, whipped cream and sugar can turn out to be anything other than a big puffy chocolate cloud of happiness, but somehow it did not deliver.

Obviously, I blame the recipe. But what frustration. I wasted all that time, money, clean dishes, and skill on a pie that sucked. And I had such big dreams for this pie. I wanted this pie to be worthy of a clever Waitress-inspired name. Something like "My Ex-Husband Earl is an Overbearing Hog, but We'll Always Have Paris . . . and this Pie" Chocolate Mousse Pie. Never mind that I don't have an ex-husband (yet) and don't know anyone named Earl (other than the tv show) -- it's a great name for a pie, no? Instead, I'm sheepishly showing up to a dinner party tomorrow night with a pie that should be called "Hey Guys, I'm Trying to Learn How to Cook, Sorry About How the Pie Looks...and Tastes, but Here, Have Some More Wine" Chocolate Mousse Pie. It's just not as catchy.