The Woe Of Cooking

I find the exquisite art of preparing food to be most interesting. I take pains to make clear that it's not because I'm the least bit good at it; I enjoy the consumption of the result as much as anyone, but when it comes to the regrettably necessary preliminary step of making the meal, I am stimulated precisely because I'm exceptionally poor at it.

 Many of my failed meals are due to an inability to keep my mind and attention on the task at hand. Many pots of water have evaporated into the air atop an abandoned stove on my watch. As many pots containing both water and rice have met a grisly and untimely end in the same fashion.

Other times the fault lies with my frugality. I habitually make a meal of rice in tomato sauce, and have taken to further spicing it with a dash of hot sauce. On my most recent trip for groceries, I observed that pizza sauce was considerably cheaper than the pasta sauce I had been buying. I did not stop to consider the distinctions between the two, and now have a very large container of said pizza sauce which substantially falls short of making the bland rice palatable (the condiment's only job). I will probably suffer through it rather than fixing (after necessarily owning up to) the mistake by spending above and beyond the 4.99 which bought the offending sauce.

Other culinary defeats I owe to the very peculiar and poorly ordered thought processes which are in my nature. In the minutes before I sat to write this, I found myself desirous of something to eat. Whether I was truly hungry or in fact felt bored is perhaps a subject for future ruminations. The point is that I went to the kitchen and set some water boiling for oatmeal. I had just a few days ago bought a bulk container of 50 flavored oatmeal packets, and justified the added expense over a canister of unflavored hot cereal by noting that said canister would sit uneaten unless vermin should take an interest in it. The even more expensive steel-cut oatmeal put out by McCann's I did not consider, on the grounds that while the food needed to be flavorful in order to induce me to eat it, it did not need to be healthful. Having a healthy breakfast will have to wait until I consistently eat breakfast (apart from coffee) at all.

The odd thinking I am prone to manifests itself in different ways. While I would not say that I am dyslexic, I confess that when writing by hand I sometimes begin with a letter in the middle of the word rather than the first letter. A similar thing happens when cooking. When the water for my oatmeal reached a boil, I put on a mitt, grabbed it, and (without thinking) deposited the requisite two cups into a bowl prior to the deployment of the dry oatmeal. The sensible thing would, of course, be to do those things in reverse order. At this time my chief concern became the prospect of splashing scalding water on myself when dropping the contents of the packets into the now-filled bowl. Two packets later, that fear was dispensed with and replaced by a new one.

The water alone filled the bowl nearly to the brim. I ignored that initially in the hope that I could delicately add the oatmeal and cause it to bind with the water without calamity. This hope was predicated on the belief that while the bowl could not easily contain both ingredients during the transitory period, it could do so once they were fully mixed. I continue to entertain that belief, but it's clear that getting to that point is practically unmanageable. Two packets into the process, I saw that was the case. The new plan was to transfer the bowl's contents into a larger bowl, at which point the adding of the remaining dry oatmeal would be a simple matter and the only tragedy would be a needlessly soiled bowl.

My best laid plans went awry, however, and I stood in front of the sink looking at spilled bowls, water and oatmeal. Determined to go on, I took the leftover water from the initial boiling, added to it until I again had two cups, retrieved another two packets, and finally had my oatmeal. I have it now in front of me. I have eaten only a little of it, and it's getting rather cold. I do not expect to eat the rest unless it keeps until at least tomorrow.

Where is the saintly woman who is charmed enough by this ineptitude to save me from it?