Day 156--- If You Cant Stand the Heat...

As skill/luck should have it I pulled through into the next round of competition, thank you very much to those of you who voted for me, I'll admit I began to worry towards the end. The next round of competition should be even tighter because there will only be 4 of us left. Congrats to the 3 of you I will be up against. For those of you that have not been following along with the contest I hope that you will make it out between next Sunday and Wednesday to read my "observational humor" post. I realize that category should be quite the stretch for me, but we shall see what I can come up with.

Here with us today is another post. After countless hours of debating, (actually not) I have decided to write about people who cant cook, but often think they can...

There is no doubt in my mind that most of you have fallen victim to one of these chef-boy-r-puke's in your life time, and frankly may even be one yourself... Apparently they are so wide spread these days that they have actually landed their own TV show on the Food Network... "The Worst Chef in America" has quickly become a popular show and one of my new TV addictions (along with 30 Rock, Meerkat Manor, and Teen Mom), it is always such an amazing feeling to watch people suck at something isn't it? Because then even if you are not so good; in comparison you will look like Gordon Ramsay.

As someone who has fairly recently fallen in love with cooking I've realized that to be decent at it you need to at least possess these three attributes; creativity, patience, and some form of vision... With out a decent amount of all three of those you are pretty much going to bind yourself to microwave dinners and fast food for the rest of your lives. When you watch someone who really sucks at cooking one thing I find that they always lack is the patience, I know this was my biggest problem when I first started. I am not a patient person in general, but when it came to cooking I was the worst. I didn't see how an egg could take so long to cook, I always just turned up the heat thinking I could expedite the process, and ended up burning it. Same with making rice, it gets so annoying to wait 40 minutes for rice to cook through properly, so I thought I could alter that by turning up the heat, in turn getting a brick of rice in the shape of the pot. So if you are one of these people who can not cook their way out of a cereal box first thing I suggest is just to give it time. Patience is a virtue. You do not need to start off cooking Rachel Ray's in 20 minute meals, all good things come to those who wait, and more inspirational stuff like that.

How many of you have fallen victim to awful cooking at the worst possible moment? How about going to a significant others parents house for the first time?... You sit down for dinner to a meal that looks like it was straight out of Christmas Vacation... If the sight and smell of what is to come was not enough to warn you, then his/her mom (the head chef) comes into the room apologizing that it was her first time making this meal... This is never a good sign, good cooks don't apologize before you have even had a chance to eat. This is them waving the white flag right off the bat. "Warning, I suck, this meal sucks, enter at your own risk". Whats even worse is when they sit there and watch you choke down the joke of a meal, luckily I am a well trained actor and I have learned to make a happy face even when tasting the most foul things ever, but you have to agree this is one of the most awkward moments that we have to endure in our adult lives. Second only to opening presents in front of people, I love presents but I hate when people insist on having me open them right in front of them (hope you enjoyed that tangent)... Make sure you have plenty of water to wash it down with, no doubt something is going to be overcooked and hard to chew in this situation... For times like this I have invented the perfect "gag gift" (get it)... I have developed a patent pending trash bag that you will be able to fasten to the inside of your pant leg, allowing you to place the inedible items in, to empty at your own convenience. I am still working on making them smell proof and heat proof, for now you will just have to either wait til the food has cooled, or chance burning your leg, it may be worth it... This is all much easier if the family has a dog though, as I'm sure you are aware.

It has long been said that if you cant stand the heat you should just stay out of the kitchen... This may be true, although I have not been in too many kitchens that the heat was that unbearable. I would like to modify that saying just a tad, henceforth let the saying be, "if you cant cook worth shit, stay out of the kitchen"... I think that has a much better ring to it, don't you???