How Did I Unlearn?

One would think if once you learned to cook, that talent would continue throughout your lifetime.

I am here to tell you, that just ain’t so.

I learned to get a meal on the table for six up to 30 folks as a step-mother, but that has been 50 years ago. In the interim, those step-children grew up, moved away, I divorced their father, married a man who did all the cooking until he died, and have lived on cereal and baloney sandwiches for 20 years.

When my stepdaughter and her hubby came to visit recently, they discovered my oven was a storage cabinet, filled with pots, pans, trays, etc. that haven’t been used in many years.

Since telling of that story brought much laughter, I thought it would be nice if I cooked something to prove I could still do that.

Here’s the problem, I never was very good at meal preparations, although the step-children did live from my efforts. I could get a meal on the table, but it was probably (no, it was more than probably) not the best meal ever served.

But, now I have an Instant Pot, a crock pot, a cabinet full of cooking vessels, and the ability to look up recipes on the Internet. And I have ventured into the land of cooking, once again.

I hate reality lessons, especially if they come as a public display. And this test I decided to share was for the benefit of friends. ‘I can do this,’ was my mantra as I decided to cook a pot of pinto beans. I have made dozens of batches of pinto beans during my 80-plus years of living. Again, they may not have been the tastiest of beans, but they satisfied some hunger needs.

I pulled out a bag of pintos that have been in my seldom visited pantry for close to 15 years, soaked them overnight, as the instructions in Spanish suggested, and put them in the crock pot along with salt, bacon, onion, garlic, and pepper. What I failed to do was plug in the pot to an electrical outlet. 

This put me behind the time I had planned on eating, by about 3 hours. So, I moved the day for this bean feast to the next day, after discovering the beans were still soaking since they were not cooking.

This would be called a ‘Second Soaking’ before the actual cooking step. 

All this is to say, by the time I served the pinto beans they were less than edible. I’m not sure whether it was the ‘serve before 2005’ message on the pinto beans package, or the two soakings, or the addition of an abundance of garlic, or not understanding my ineptness in the kitchen, but my guests were polite enough to be happy I also served popcorn and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I’m actually quite good at those two things.

Now I am back to ordering takeout meals, enjoying baloney and cheese, and feasting on corn flakes and fruit. No wonder one of my friends keeps saying “Margo’s taste is not very sophisticated.”

How true that is!