I grew up with the benefit of having wonderful cooks in my life. My Grandmother taught me how to cook and I am very grateful. Nolen was not so lucky. I couldn't even trust him to boil water.
One day Nolen sat down and did our taxes. When he saw just how much we really did make last year, he was shocked. He had an epiphany about where all that money went. He realized that eating out did us in. He also realized that I just couldn't be the one to do the cooking, as I was working a ton of hours. He had to do something. So he started to learn how to cook.
This was a huge deal for me. I didn't want to teach him. I mean, he knew NOTHING!!! I had to teach him how to stir. He had (and still has) no intuition in the kitchen. A lot of cooking is intuition. How do you know when the chicken is done? It isn't always an exact time frame. So for years, I didn't teach him. I kept the skill to myself and hated having the soul responsibility.
After his epiphany, I gave in. I started teaching him meal by meal. He has gone from being able to make Mac n Cheese, to being able to make meatballs from scratch. He still needs to learn how to make actual balls and not lumps of meat, but they taste great none the less.
While at work last night, I called Nolen to walk him through how to make teriyaki chicken wings. The ladies at work were laughing their butts off. I was telling Nolen to get out the broiler pan to cook them on. Nolen and I went back and forth to make sure he was using the broiler pan, but not putting them under the broiler. How do you tell someone how to put together a marinade for the chicken, when you normally dump things in? It was quite entertaining to say the least.
Future posts will delve more into Nolen's cooking adventures. I am sure there will be some doozies.
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