Why I Hate Cooking

There are many reasons why I hate cooking.  To start off, we can blame my mother.  See, a long time ago she made a disgusting concoction she called "Spam Burgers".  If the fact she tried to kill us wasn't enough, she told everyone I made them.  Its the family's standing joke, as is my cooking.  See, I did NOT make the spam burgers, and I would NOT have, because there is more than one step to them, and cooking fat, ground meat is difficult.  Granted, I'm not as bad as my sister asking my mom how to cook a can of corn, but I'm fairly useless in the kitchen.  There are some things I can make, and Rob likes most of it, but I'm definitely challenged in the kitchen.  But there is so much more involved in preparing a meal than most non-meal providers realize.  And they all add up to why I hate cooking.

You start with a piece of paper.  On this piece of paper you figure out what you need to buy for the household.  Both food and other items.  You need to have ESP to read the minds of the other family members to do this successfully.  And you never get it right.  When they get home and realized you shopped, at least one will say "But I needed......".  And you will remind them "Well, it wasn't on the list", but it will still be YOUR fault, because that's just the way it is.  Then you take your magical list to the grocery store, try to figure out how to get all the items on a very small budget.  But it doesn't matter, you wont get it right.  If you went through a pound of deli turkey in 3 days last week, this week you'll end up throwing away 3/4 of a pound.  Then you wait in line to pay for it, all the while you are surrounded by chocolate and magazine covers that do NOT look like you.  And even if you don't cave in to the calories of the chocolate, you still gain 5 pounds in the check out because the airbrushed women on the cover's of the magazines willed it to be.  And beautiful, thin women ALWAYS get what they want.

Then you get it home and put it away.  While you are putting it away you realize you, yourself, forgot to put 3 things on the list, so you start next weeks list with the "seed" items.  Then comes the real night mare.  Figuring out how to make all the stuff you just bought magically bloom into healthy meals that your family will delight in eating.  And because it is all carefully made with love, it will both feed their body's and their souls, right?

Not in THIS family!!!  It starts at 5:30am before I have my coffee.. "So, what are you planning for dinner?", Pitman nicely asks.  If he could even understand my answer, which is a violent threat about where I'm PLANNING on SHOVING his dinner, he would forget and ask me 78 more times through out the day.  But I get about an hour break before Cassie asks.  "Something with Chicken" I will tell her, and her response is "AAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!  I HATE  CHICKEN!!!  I'M NOT EATING IT!!!  I'M NOT EATING DINNER EVER AGAIN!!!!!"  And we have that same exact conversation a few more times before the dinner hour.

Then there is the actual preparing of the meal.  I have no idea, but every time I go to cook the fire alarm in the house goes off.  Rob started cooking the meal on Wednesday, I stirred it, and the alarm went off.  Oh, and I've mentioned this before but I want to remind you of the woman who hides upstairs until I start to cook.  So last night I'm frying up some Raviolis (which, in case you are wondering, Cassie screamed "AAAARRRRRRRRr!!!!!  I HATE RAVIOLIS!!!!  I'M NEVER EATING DINER EVER AGAIN!!!!!") and the alarm goes off.  If that awful beeping isn't enough, this time I have Marley running around the house, barking, looking for the lady hiding upstairs telling him to get out of the house because there is a fire.  This all excites Cassie who starts chasing after him, barking and laughing.  But, eventually its time for dinner.

She then sits down, after telling me 394 times she is NOT coming to dinner and me calmly giving her the count down until dinner time, and says grace.  "Dear Lord, thank you for this meal and thank you for this day", but in reality it comes out sounding like "Lord, you suck and I cant believe I have to sit here and eat this crap."  Then Rob says to the Lord, "Thank You for this meal.  I hope it tastes as good as it smells."  I take this as "Please Lord, let me live through another day of her cooking".  Which brings me back to the beginning of my day and Pitman's first question, and I just feel like telling him to bend over to see where I'm serving HIS dinner tonight.

And THIS is why I hate cooking.