Welcome to Hell’s Kitchen
Jackie Wells-Fauth
Yes, indeed this is another rant about my cooking. But I’ve finally decided what my culinary technique reminds me of. There is a program on television called “Hell’s Kitchen.” I see it advertised, but I don’t watch it because cooking programs just depress me. And that program appears to consist of a man yelling at people for poor cooking. I can get examples of poor cooking anytime I want!
What I don’t usually have is people yelling at me for it. Fortunately, the one person in my household who hates cooking more than I do is Roy, so he’s careful about how he comments on what I cook. Since we met when he, as an Aberdeen fireman, showed up to put out my burning supper, he can’t even tell you that he didn’t know what he was getting into!
So, he has eaten many a meal that wasn’t exactly up to cooking show standards and he’s pretty mellow about it. He can eat burned bacon, undercooked pancakes and warm orange juice, without too much complaint. “The bacon has less burned spots this time,” he will say and I feel like Julia Child because I take that as the greatest compliment in the world. Take that, Hell’s Kitchen!
There are some critiques occasionally for my cooking, however. I mismanaged a piece of fried chicken one day and divided it between the dog and the cat. The dog, not the most discerning of cuisine artists, gobbled down her share, but when I offered the other part to the cat, she looked down her nose as if to say, “I don’t take failed cooking projects, thank you.”
I occasionally make pastry items when my grandsons come. Years of experience have taught the older two to be cautious about what they put in their mouths, but the four-year-old not as well-educated in my cooking yet, crammed an entire bar in his mouth, looked thoughtful for a minute, and then spit it back out. That pretty much says it all!
The biggest critic in the house, of course, is the smoke alarm. My sister once gave me a set of napkins which said, “Supper’s ready when the smoke alarm goes off.” I would be offended by that if it weren’t for the fact that the smoke alarm and I are on very close terms. I slightly overcook something and the smoke alarm announces it to everyone. “Shut up or you’re next!” is my favorite response, but the smoke alarm is usually unmoved. It also doesn’t respond to shoes thrown at it, brooms taking a swing or any curse word I can come up with.
That would have been bad enough if not for the recent addition of an air purifier. I thought this was a great idea until I realized that the only time the air purifier gets excited is when I cook. Now I have two robotic critics of my cooking, and people want to make this an AI world? I don’t think so!
The other day, I decided that instead of burning bacon in the frying pan, I would char it on the broiler. Someone told me this made less of an atmospheric impact. No, I don’t know what that means, but it sounded good!
Of course, the bacon singed on all the edges and the smoke alarm joyfully started its usual routine. “I know, I know, I don’t need you to tell me the bacon burned,” I shouted at an inanimate object. “Nobody else cares, why do you?”
At just that moment, the air purifier kicked in. This machine, normally completely silent in its operation, suddenly kicked into a gear I didn’t know it possessed, frantically trying to clear the air of my cooking. It revved like a racecar engine, and for a few minutes, I thought its insides were going to come bursting out with the effort.
“Et tu, Brute?” I asked, my eyes stinging with smoke. “I don’t already have one machine giving my cooking an F, you have to add your opinion??????”
By the way, even the dog wouldn’t eat the bacon. Welcome to Hell’s Kitchen.
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