Cooking: Highly Overrated

    I've never been a good cook. A good cook always seems to A.) have interesting, even edible leftovers in the refrig, and B.) says things like "Cooking relaxes me." Cooking make me nervous, blindingly nervous; I am always out of some herb, which leads to needing a substitute herb, which leads to looking stuff up about herbs online. A tuna casserole could take me an hour and a half to put together.  And the only thing semi-interesting I have in my refrig is Portuguese white wine. (Thank God for that.) There's also some 1% milk, and some tired, pathetic asparagus I bought a week ago when I saw a recipe in a magazine, then forgot both the magazine it was in and the asparagus. I also have a couple of Paul Newman's salad dressings from 2010.

    Ina Garten: she probably has lots of cool leftovers she can haul out of her refrig, reheat and serve up as a supper for her fabulously wealthy husband, Jeffrey. I'm assuming he's fabulously wealthy because in all of her shows, Jeffrey drives home "from the city" on the weekends, and she has a wonderful roast chicken for him, and a "really fabulous blueberry crumble" for dessert. My husband (also named Jeff, but not Jeffrey; sometimes I call him Just Jeff, to annoy him) would drop dead if he walked in the door and the chicken wasn't a rotisserie chicken from the Shop Rite. And what the heck's a crumble? Of course, maybe I'd be happier about cooking if my husband only drove home only on weekends, and he was driving a BMW. I doubt it: I'd still be a terrible cook. But I'm pretty sure I'd be happier...

    Last night I tried to make a recipe called "Crustless Quiche". It called for evaporated milk; I bought condensed milk. I actually bought 4 cans of condensed milk, because at the Shop Rite, I didn't know that I only needed a half a cup for Crustless Quiche. (Who knew?) This mistake led me to the computer, where I spent an hour Googling evaporated vs. condensed milk, and learned a lot about this funny little milk that comes in the cute little cans, but decided in the end, what the hell, just use the 1% milk in the fridge. I also spent a great deal of time wiping off the baby bella mushrooms with a damp paper towel, because apparently mushrooms don't like to get all wet (which I can relate to, so I really didn't mind.) The frozen spinach was supposed to be thawed; I'd forgotten that, so I "quick-thawed" it by holding it under hot water, then squeezing the semi-frozen block of spinach dry (I swear the recipe called for that; why would I make that up?)

    Physically, my hands were now freezing, and mentally, I was extremely uncomfortable about the cleanliness of my baby bellas; how many deer feet had meandered over these fungi in the forest? Did raccoons touch them with their dirty, albeit adorable raccoon paws...or a body part much less adorable?

    As I was drinking quite a bit of wine by now, I decided to pour a little--oh, fine, a lot of wine, but my hands were basically frozen and the bottle slipped a little-- into the pan with the bellas and the spinach. I figured a little alcohol would take care of any forest contamination, and probably thaw any still-frozen chunks of spinach. Let me just add, it was now about 9 o'clock at night, and my husband, seeing that I was winging it pretty heavily, went out to get the paper, and after driving back home in his Ford Focus, asked:
 "Need a hand, Hon?"
    
    Hell no: I need Bobby Flay, more wine, and probably Take Out Chinese.

    Relaxed I was not. Pertinent questions raced through my mind:
Why didn't I just buy the damn rotisserie chicken and be done with it?
What the living hell was I going to do with 4 cans of condensed milk?
And wouldn't condensed milk, by definition, be milk that liquid has evaporated from, thereby making them one and the same?

    No matter. Wait till Jeff sees the fabulous dessert I've planned: Weight Watchers Mini Fudge Bars, 45 calories each.

    Take that, Ina.

    Messed up your dessert then called it a "crumble", huh? Can't fool me, sister.