Chen Can't Cook

For a long time now, I've been saying to myself that I gotta learn how to cook. I mean, you can survive on frozen pizzas, fast food, or going out to eat only so long before you realize that it's not exactly the best way to go. Health wise, money wise, whatever. Not only that, but I've always believed that cooking could be a really great lifelong hobby, and seeing that it's such a useful skill anyways, why not try to learn?

Well, throughout the past few years, there have been the scattered times when, for one reason or another, I've actually picked up a pot or pan, used a cutting board, fired up the stove, and cooked something. Some of these experiences have been successful, for example, I think I've mastered the art of saute-ing spinach with garlic (oooh I'm awesome), fried rice with ketchup, and once I followed a recipe to make a salmon fillet dish and it wasn't too bad either. Whenever I happen to taste (har har) success, it builds confidence and gives me some motivation to continue expanding my cooking horizons by mastering more things.

Unfortunately, there are also the times when I mess up something so simple, and it makes me so ashamed that I'm afraid to ever pick up a cooking utensil again. Once I messed up the process of hard-boiling eggs, don't ask me how, but I did it. Another experience that comes to mind is when I cooked a burger and set off the fire alarm at the townhouse.

Well, this week I suffered another setback in my journey towards becoming Iron Chef. Believe it or not, I managed to somehow ruin my sandwiches that I eat every day for lunch. Since I was getting kind of bored with the plain bread with meat and mayo and nothing else, I wanted to soup up my every day lunch sandwich by adding some extra components. I bought a head of lettuce, some tomatoes, and slices of cheese.

I also decided to streamline my process by making all my lunches for the rest of the week at once (instead of one per night). Well, the greediness definitely did not pay off, to say the least. Everything seemed fine at first, I'd rip off a few leaves of lettuce, slice up the tomatos, get a slice of cheese, and just stick it all in the sandwich. Simply repeat the same process for the other sandwiches. I mean, how hard can it be, it's a freakin sandwich you know?

It wasn't until I opened my lunch to eat it the next day that I discovered that my sandwich actually was "souped up", only not in the way I wanted it to be. From sitting overnight, all the tomato's juices and I guess the moisture from the lettuce sank to the bottom and made the bread all wet and soggy. The worst part is, for some reason the cheese melted and got all liquidy too. It was all pretty nasty, but I sucked it up and tried to eat it anyways. Again, I'd have to say that wasn't the right decision.

So now, I've got 2 more of these monstrosities sitting in the fridge at home, and I'm pretty sure that I'm gonna be throwing them out tonight. I just can't put myself through another miserable lunch.

While it does suck that all that food and the time and effort I spent making it is gonna go to waste, the main kick in the balls is knowing that I messed up the simple task of making a sandwich. It's not like making sandwiches even counts as cooking, and I couldn't even do that right.

As I hang my head for this utter and complete failure, I'm thinking that something needs to be done about my food incompetance. One idea I had was to take a cooking class at like a community college or something. I don't know if they even offer those, but I mean to find out. Maybe some of you out there might even want to join me (at your own risk). I kind of miss taking classes with people. I miss the good old days of studying for tests together, copying each other's homework, things like that.

One thing I know: until my confidence recovers and I have good reason to believe I won't mess up any food I try to make, I'm leaving the food preparation responsibility for everything I eat strictly to the pros.