People who don't cook? Share your stories here!

[Jenise]

The other day a friend dropped by when I was prepping extra-large red potatoes for a baked potato dinner (for us it's a main course, not a side dish). This friend is in late middle age, has never been married, and to say that she has never learned to cook is putting it mildly.

She asked if she could stay for dinner, and I said sure. When she saw me take a brush to the outside of these already fairly clean potatoes, she said "Oh, don't do that! I always leave the dirt on, it makes them crunchier."

Yes, she was completely serious.

Kind of an opposite story here. My mother tells of a time she was at her mother-in-law's (my father's mother or Grandma Hart), who was a very good cook (and never had store-bought bread) made a cake one day. After mixing the batter, she put it in a cake pan and started baking it in the oven. About 15 minutes later she realized she forgot to add the baking powder. So she pulled the cake out of the oven, threw in a handfull of baking powder (she never measured - she just knew), stirred it up and put it back in the oven. My mother insists it was the best cake she ever had.

2 stories come immediately to mind.

#1 My best friend/cooking co-conspirator lives next door to me. Last May we had a fencing party and everyone in the neighborhood came and worked. In one day we fenced 4 properties. So she and I fixed dinner for everyone that night. Nothing fancy.... gazpacho to start, rib eyes on the grill, roasted asparagus, garlic mashed potatoes, and fresh fruit salad with ginger whipped cream for dessert. Oh, and of course, decent wine. Typical for us any night of the week.

There was a universal reaction of astonishment, so we started talking about what they all do. One family said they eat Old El Paso Tacos 5 or 6 nights a week. (In New Mexico?!) One single man said he makes a mean Macaroni and Cheese. Got us all excited until he added, dead seriously... "But it has to be the kind from the Blue Box." Another guy said he just rotates through all the various fast food joints over the course of the week and eats on the way home.

It was amazing. I really didn't have a lot to say to all that!


#2 Best Friend and I are in EMS and one night we had a new person in town assigned to be on call with us. Since we live literally next door to Quarters, we asked her to join us for dinner. Again, nothing we would consider out of the ordinary for the menu. She asked a few polite questions about the food, and we went on like we always do together about cooking and ingredients, and she looked at us dumbstruck and said, "Wow! You guys think about food A LOT, don't you?!"

Um. Doesn't everybody?