FRIDGEIDATOR

Another episode in the kitchen saga.

There is an appliance in your kitchen, that much like your microwave, only attempts to please you. Your fridge has only one goal in life, and that is to store things for you. It will also keep them cold, most of the time. It does not care what you store in it. It could be a food item, or a sock. The issues that come into play with this appliance are time, and hygiene.
Let’s deal with the time issue first. Your fridge will keep any item you place in it for as long as you like. I have jars of condiments from the late 70’s still happily tucked away in the back of my fridge. They’ve been through countless moves and different states. I’ve never heard of mustard going bad...so why throw it away? The problem is when the fridge thinks that you are unhappy with the item you’ve placed in it. Such as leftover meatloaf that you made for Valentine’s Day. It is now some time in September. The fridge believes that you are unhappy with the meatloaf and to appease you will attempt to turn it into something else. Usually some kind of bread, or stew. This usually turns out badly. I have seen my wife open a container that was stashed in the back of the fridge, only to let out a strangled scream and hurl the item across the kitchen. I believe that the item she found must have been aggressive, which is the case with many of the new life forms that your fridge will produce. They have not been properly socialized.
These items fall into two categories. The wet item, any item that started out as a liquid or has high moisture content. These items tend to be the aggressive ones. And the dry items. The latter tend to dry out even more, become lethargic and hairy, but much less aggressive. The socialization aspect of food has a lot to do with how it is stored. If you seal an item away and forget about it, it tends to feel neglected, and when your fridge transmogrifies it these feelings of neglect carry over and it becomes aggressive. However, if the item is loosely wrapped and stored in such a way that it can breathe and socialize with the other foods, it will slowly dry out, get hairy and mellow. This too has its drawbacks. A loosely wrapped cake will become so socialized that it will smell and taste like fish, even if you don’t have fish in your fridge. If you want to be safe, check the items in your fridge weekly. If you don’t know what it is, or when you made it, throw it away.
This brings us to our next topic, hygiene. Your fridge won’t clean itself. Again, your fridge does not care what your place in it, or how it is placed. If, perchance, you have children, and they like the syrup to be thick and cold when they use it, they will place it in the fridge. The problem is that they don’t care how they place it in the fridge. And if, perchance, they don’t set it in there in an upright fashion, it may leak. And if, you happen to not see this leak, and place a container on the said leaked syrup, the said placed container has now become a permanent part of your fridge. It will not come off of the shelf regardless of how you try. I don’t understand the physics involved, but it happens. Throw away the appliance and buy a new one. Unless the container is placed in a way that seems useful. Remember your fridge will not clean itself, and if you are like me, you won’t clean it either, it’s dangerous in there. This is a job better left as a punishment, for perhaps spilling the syrup.

Cooking in general

Cooking, like many things, becomes easier with experience.
When you start, everything seems daunting. The recipes aren't clear. The steps convoluted.
Why do I need to do that?
What if I don't have this?
How do I know if....?
The more often you cook, the easier this all becomes. You begin to understand the steps and ingredients.
The great Victor Wooten, a musician, equated music to language. When you are young, you do not have the vocabulary to express yourself fully. As you grow and your mastery of the language progresses, you are able to express yourself more fully and more succinctly.
Cooking is the same way. As your culinary vocabulary expands so will your ability to express your ideas. It will be the difference between knowing a recipe, and understanding it.
Once you have the understanding, you will not need the recipe.
You will be able to taste a dish and recreate it. You will know why it tastes the way it does. How the textures were made.
That's when the fun starts. Now you will be able to change things, modify them to your satisfaction.
Try this.
Have someone pick a flavor or style of cooking. Like spicy, or Asian. Then pick a texture. Now create a meal based on this input.
If you like to cook, this can be fun. See how close you can get to satisfying that craving.
It helps if you know the person's likes and dislikes, the better you know them the easier the challenge.
But the gratification is the same.
Cooking is all about making someone happy. Even if it's you.

That other room in your house

Don’t live in fear of your kitchen.
It won’t hurt you, it just has to get to know you first.
I know many people who, when asked if they cook, just shake their head and mutter something about burning water. You shouldn’t be afraid of your kitchen. Sure, it’s full of razor sharp knives and 500 degree ovens, but once you get to know each other everything will be fine.
You have to spend time in the kitchen to become familiar with it, and it with you. If you do this your relationship will flourish and you two will have many happy years together.
You have to start somewhere, and what better to start with, than the things that live in your kitchen. Now, I understand that many newcomers to the kitchen will have many secondhand items that live there. These items are ok, but I always prefer to get them myself. That way I don’t have to worry about bad habits that have been picked up from previous owners. If you get these items while they are young, you are able to train them in a way that best suits you. Not to mention that if you buy these items yourself you are assured to get the exact breed you want.
Let’s move on to one of the primary denizens of your kitchen, the stove. (Don’t make that face.) Again, time is the key thing in trying to form a lasting relationship with your stove. The stove is a very needy appliance. (Unlike the fridge, who, if left alone for long periods, will actually transmute things from one species to another, in order to please you with this new item.) When dealing with your stove, at least in the beginning, you should never leave it alone. Not even for a little bit.
Here’s an example, you decide to get to know your kitchen and want to make a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. You go to the fridge and get your ingredients, it loves you and not only does it give you the butter and the cheese, but it shows you some new form of green meatbread that it has made for you. All would be well, except for the fact that the meatbread has not been socialized very much and was extremely aggresive. But anyway, you have your ingredients now. You reach in and get one of the brand new baby pans you bought.(Love that breed). You assemble the sandwich and set the stovetop to medium. The pan is hot and happy and you start to cook your grilled cheese. You think, boy, that guy was right, cooking isn’t hard. You’re happy, the stove is happy, the pan is happy. You check the progress on the first side of your sandwich and decide to flip it over. All goes well. The phone rings, you think, hmmm...I just flipped the sandwich, I have a couple minutes, I’ll just see who it is. Now you’ve done it. The stove is furious. You guys were having a great time, and you had to go and leave. It turns the burner up to incinerate. In the 45 seconds that you were gone not only did the stove ruin your lunch, it started a 3 alarm fire. It also killed your pan.
Yes, stoves can be very needy in the beginning of a relationship. Don’t start with them unless you are able to devote all the time necessary to complete the meal or it will do very bad things. As you and your stove become friends you will get to know each other better, and you will be able to do other things while you cook. Just remember that the stove will know if it is being neglected and will take the appropriate action to get your attention.

Your Microwave

Have you ever experienced small children who are so eager to please you that they will try to do anything that you ask of them? This is your microwave. It only wants to please you, and it will do anything you ask it to, as fast as it possibly can. Even if what you ask is out of its scope of capabilities. This is where you, the adult, have to know what tasks it can perform. If you don’t, it will get a complex and may even stop working altogether.
Here are some tips to help you maintain the emotional equilibrium of your mic. Your microwave loves to reheat things, anything, as long as it isn’t protein based. It even likes to cook many pre-prepared foods that masquerade as proteins. (They really aren’t, they are some transmogrified jumble of protein-like substance and filler, and you don’t want to know the rest.) Your mic does not want to be relied upon to do all of the cooking. If you don’t believe me, then try this, get a chicken leg from the freezer, season it up, and put it in your mic. Cook it until done and try to eat it. I dare you. I don’t care what book you’ve seen on microwave cooking, your mic doesn’t want to do it. Be nice to it. Don’t make it try to compete with the stove. That’s just not fair to anyone involved.
There are two basic rules for maintaining the sanity of your mic.
The first rule is, do not expect your microwave to play well with proteins. They don’t get along. Your mic doesn’t heat them evenly and on a molecular level, just screws them up. You will get little, to no browning because there is no radiant heat source. (Some of the new models have a heating element in addition to their standard microwave emitter, but I don’t trust them.) Why ask your mic to do something that it wasn’t meant to do? Sure, there are ways to get around this issue, but why? Use the stove for proteins.
The second rule is very simple, but I see people break it all the time for a variety of reasons. It goes like this, DO NOT PUT METAL IN YOUR MICROWAVE. Yes, I know it came with a metal rack. That rack came from the inner rings of Saturn, and is made from kryptonite. It is the only metal item that is ever...did I say EVER...allowed in your mic. No foil. No pans. No metal edged plates. Remember gold is a metal. If you put metal in your microwave you will know. It will make a variety of strange sounds to try to alert you to your grievous mistake. If these sounds go unnoticed, it will proceed to try to get your attention by giving you a display not unlike the grand finale at the Fourth of July. If this goes unheeded, many times it will stop working... at all...ever. Sometimes, it will be such a trooper that it will continue to try and work, but you both know it’s over. Don’t put yourselves through that farce. No metal.
If you treat your microwave like the eager child that it is, you will never be disappointed. Just remember, you are the adult and you have to set boundaries.