Of course you can cook! I mean, you totally toast bread every morning, and yeah sure, it sometimes burns a bit, but that’s nothing a bit of peanut butter can’t cover up. And how about those knife skills? You’re probably the world’s best spreader of all time if, in fact, there was some way to measure that. Jelly, butter, honey, you name it!
Okay, let’s get real. You can’t cook. Better yet, it’s not that you can’t cook, it’s more that you have yet to realize your cooking potential. You’re simply a bit clueless in the kitchen. Whether you’ve been depending on your mother or dining hall chefs all these years, at one time or another it’s going to catch up with you, and you’re going to have to set foot in that kitchen and get cooking! You’ll be surprised with how fast it is to acquire the basic skills needed to assemble a healthy, hearty, and appetizing meal. So get over your kitchen phobia, or your general indifference, and harness yourself with these suggestions. In no time you’ll be skipping the latest episode of Pretty Little Liars to critique Rachael Ray’s rendition of chicken cordon bleu on The Food Network.
Introduce yourself to the kitchen.
If the kitchen conjures images of, well, this:
…you’re not alone. But c’mon, really? You know how to press buttons, to read “high”, “medium”, and “low”, and you most certainly learned caution techniques when your pre-school teacher instructed you to look left and right before crossing the street. The kitchen may be foreign ground to you, but it is navigable, and if you take the time to look at the different devices, there’s no reason why any of their functions should surprise you. Have patience, use common sense, and relax! You’re going to mess up a lot before you reach success in the kitchen, so give yourself some leeway and use the time to get comfortable. You won’t burn the house down (hopefully), but before you get it right the next time, you might overcook your meat, undercook your pasta, or realize two hours too late that your cake hadn’t been cooking at all.
