Early Signs I Lacked the Cooking Gene

Daily writing prompt

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

It was my new job’s first Thanksgiving Day meal, and I signed up to bring a dessert. I baked a sweet potato pie. I used a frozen pie crust, but all the other ingredients were from scratch. I added all the ingredients, but I had a niggling feeling that I had forgotten something. But it was such a beautiful pie, and everyone marveled at it sitting on the dessert table. We didn’t put our names on our food, and no one had seen who brought the delicious-looking pie.

After we had eaten the main entree, I was excited for everyone to taste my pie, envisioning pats on the back and praise. I bit into the pie, and immediately, I knew what I had forgotten to add: the sugar! It was the most awful sweet potato pie I had ever eaten! When people asked who brought it, I did not inform them it was me. I acted as appalled as everyone else that someone was such a poor cook!

I am still not a cook. My husband does the cooking, except for the bowls of oatmeal I cook in the microwave for breakfast or the sandwiches I make for lunch. I can make a dynamite sandwich. My mother only cooked on Sundays, so my sister and I learned to make sandwiches to sustain us. When my children were growing up, I worked sometimes up to twelve hours a day at the local telephone company, and Sam’s Club’s frozen meat meals were my go-to for dinner. I opened cans of vegetables for them so they had balanced meals.

Today, both of my daughters are caterers. They tell me they learned to cook because they decided that when they became adults, they would never eat frozen food again. If I had known they had inherited some great cooking ancestor’s genes, they could have been serving up good food as teenagers. I love their cooking, especially their fried fish, which is better than any you can get at a restaurant. They put Red Lobster to shame, honey child!

When I am asked to bring food to church, I always ask, “How many buckets?” I assure them that they do not want me to bring food. If I offer to cook something for the holidays, my daughters, with a look of pure dread, tell me not to bring anything but myself! Once, my granddaughter bragged to the children whose mothers cooked homemade cookies for their class that at her grandmother’s house, cookies came from a bag! She was right proud of that accomplishment!

Cooking is not one of the talents God gave to me! I learned that fact early, and I was okay with it. My children didn’t starve. But I’m thankful for a cooking husband at this time in my life, because it’s expensive eating out, particularly when you depend on Social Security and a pension.