Burnt Offerings

I’ve never been known for my cooking, but after eleven years of step-mothering four teenagers, I could get a meal on the table for— not a cast of thousands—but at least 15 hungry, non-discriminating folks.

Give me a roast, potatoes, onions, hamburger meat, tomato sauce, and pinto beans, and we’d call it a feast.

Then I took a thirty-year hiatus from cooking, swearing I’d never step foot in a kitchen again. Meal prep and my mental health never really got along. I lacked culinary creativity and never developed what people call “taste buds.” I grew up on meat and potatoes, baloney, peanut butter, and white bread. Nothing fancy. Nothing green unless it came from Jell-O.

Recently, though, I decided it was time to relocate my stove and relearn how to turn it on. My first venture back into the culinary world: a pot of pinto beans with a ham bone, a bit of bacon, and maybe some cornbread—a staple from my past life.

I dusted off my old Betty Crocker cookbook—the 1960 edition, back when recipes assumed you owned an apron and a can opener. Skimming the instructions, I figured this would be easy enough. Of course, I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. I relied on instinct and a memory full of holes.

I sorted through the beans, tossed out the tiny rocks and broken bits, and ignored the part about soaking them overnight. I’d never done that before and wasn’t about to start. I wanted dinner tonight, not in 24 hours.

I filled a pot with water, dumped in the beans, added a chopped onion, a strip or two of bacon, a pinch of salt (but no ham hock), cranked the burner to what felt like a “mediumish” heat—and cracked open a book.

Unfortunately, the book was a mediocre thriller, and I got just interested enough to forget the beans completely. Aging has narrowed my multitasking to exactly one task at a time, and cooking didn’t make the cut. Naturally, I decided a nap would be more productive.

By the time I wandered back into the kitchen, my culinary comeback had turned into a small domestic tragedy. The pot was scorched black. The beans, cremated. I stood over it in silence, said a few respectful words, and took the whole thing—pot and all—out to the trash. Some meals deserve a proper burial.

Munching a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I came to terms with the fact that my cooking career had peaked sometime around 1984. If I couldn’t manage a pot of pinto beans, that was a sign the kitchen and I were officially estranged.

From now on, if I want something exotic for dinner—like a hamburger—I’ll just order out.

That Little Voice