Everything's Easy When You Know How

I take it as a given that the thing humans do least well is communicate. Nowhere is this more evident than when one person who knows how to do something but is not an expert wants to explain, without props, to someone who is a complete novice how to do it.

My first piece of advice to the novice is if the teacher says - nay, insists - "It's easy," then you must say immediately that your mother is dying, your manslaughter trial begins in twenty minutes, or that you have recently contracted a loathsome social disease. Say anything that will allow you to make your escape.

Throughout my adult life, the topic regarding which I have been most frequently - that is to say, always - victimized is cooking. Not one peson has ever tried to explain to me how to make a particular dish without saying "It's easy."

Unhappily, they clandestinely share a dictionary with uncommon definitions for common words, and once they begin their cooking explanations it becomes obvious that their version of "easy" means "So complex that several days into the preparation of this dish you will eat the raw ingredients with your bare hands in order to stave off starvation."

One evening each week, or as close to that schedule as we can manage, I visit my old junk mail friend, Bobby, previously mentioned in this blog. Our arrangement is that we alternate cooking responsibilities. Bobby can cook. I, on the other hand, . . . .

Given my limitations, the variety of meals that I cook for us is limited, and it recently occurred to me that it *is* the twenty-first century after all and perhaps Google really is my friend. I began a search for "easy meals."

This is the absolute truth: I clicked on the first results link and at that site I clicked on a "100 Easy Dinners" link. I then clicked on the link to the first dinner title that caught my interest: Chicken Marsala.

Keep in mind that to me, "easy" means "Start a stove burner and dump everything on top of it." I'd even include putting the food into a pot or a pan first. OK? Now, forget the process, just look at the list of ingredients:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon Essence, recipe follows
2 (6 to 8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in halves and pounded thin
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
3 cups sliced mushrooms (cremini, oyster, shiitake)
3/4 cup Marsala
1 cup chicken stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chopped chives, for garnish

Recipe for "Essence" (required above)

2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dried leaf oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme

Now here is a list of the above ingredients which I do *not* have on hand:

all-purpose flour
boneless, skinless chicken breasts
olive oil
sliced mushrooms
Marsala
chicken stock
freshly ground black pepper
chopped chives
paprika
garlic powder
onion powder
dried leaf oregano
dried thyme

And a list of the ingredients that I *do* have on hand is:

butter
salt
black pepper
cayenne pepper

Now one *expects* to have to buy the chicken, and perhaps one or two ingredients, but you see what I mean, right?

Perhaps I should mention that I *do* have a tablespoon too. No, don't be so cynical. I also have a measuring cup.

Which of you will volunteer to contact the usage panels of the various Webster's dictionaries, the American Heritage dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, and numerous others, in order to inform them that they omitted a definition of the word "easy?"

I threw the word "bachelors" into my search and things look more promising. One conclusion reached in short order, however, is that if credit is given for a recipe and that credit goes to a woman, I'll just move along, thank you very much, 'preciate it, my mother is dying, I gotta go. When it comes to "easy" we don't speak the same language.

As an aside, the *best* single instruction regarding a recipe that I ever heard was at a back yard party in Maryland. The hostess and another woman, both thirtyish, were talking about the recipe for something the hostess had prepared. The latter was reciting ingredients and when she got to vanilla extract, the guest asked "How much?"

"Oh, 'bout a mouthful."

Unhandy

I have said here before that I am not handy. This surfaces in various ways, most recently with a kitchen stove timer. Last night and this morning, as a matter of fact.

Among other areas in which I am remarkably uninformed and untalented, we may include cooking. My father was a good cook, my brother Billy is a good cook, but if it weren't for technology I would dine on charcoal, E. coli, and salmonella.

Fortunately, the microwave bailed me out decades ago.

My current microwave is about ten years old, I think, and has seen more frozen meals than most of my friends' freezers combined. Several nights ago I nuked a frozen chicken pot pie. Five minutes on high, if you must know. When it was done, the microwave began piping its "All done, dummy" message, which for this oven is one long note, perhaps three seconds in duration.

Halfway through the note the volume dropped to barely audible. Oh oh, new microwave time. While devouring that meal I processed what little information I had, concluding only that it was at least possible that the only problem was with that volume, and that the cooking function might still be A-OK.

The next day I cranked up the stove oven as a backup and put another frozen meal into the microwave. Everything seemed to work normally - the internal light was on, there was much blowing of air, and the carousel turned, however reluctantly.

This time when the meal was cooked, the volume began at nearly subaudible instead of tapering off to that level, but this was no longer the issue. Cautiously, I tasted the middle of the meal and was gratified to learn that indeed the microwave's cooking function was in order.

Fifteen minutes later, finished with the meal and walking by the stove on the way to the kitchen sink, I detected an inordinate amount of heat. Sigh. I turned the oven off. Really, I don't know how I've survived this long. A few thousand years ago I'd have set the cave on fire.

Now those of you who actually cook might be surprised to learn that even in this day and age there are some frozen meals - aside from Thanksgiving turkeys - that cannot be nuked but must be cooked in a conventional oven, or even a broiler. Perhaps once a week I cook something in this fashion.

(Background: I moved into my current abode five and a half years ago. One item present, of course, was the stove. With no instructions. Now I suspect that the very worst of us would not need instructions to turn on the oven or the broiler, but what about setting the clock and setting the timer, hmmmm? I don't even set the clock in my car. Since I replaced a battery a couple of weeks ago, the car's clock is about three hours and forty-five minutes off. Whether slow or fast I don't remember.¹)

Since the microwave had a timer which could be used even when not cooking anything, I have always used that and never the stove timer, even when using the stove's oven. The microwave timer's call has always been loud enough to hear from several rooms away.

No more, alas.

Last night I threw something into the oven (450 degrees for 30 minutes) and set about figuring out the stove timer. I raced through increments of time and found that I could not set it for more than twelve minutes. What the Hell use is that?

I gave it up and decided to take on the responsibility of knowing when the thirty minutes was up, and it will delight and amaze you, I am sure, to learn that this little experiment was successful. And that I remembered to turn off the oven.

Fast forwarding to somewhere around six o'clock this morning, we find me sleeping comfortably until awakened by a ceaseless series of short, shrill, loud bursts of sound. From the stove's timer. Which will, it turns out, time up to twelve hours and not twelve minutes, as I had thought.

It remains to be seen whether I will give the stove timer another try, but my guess is that the most likely outcome is the purchase of a small kitchen timer.

¹ January 12, 2009 - It's slow.