I don’t do the cooking at our house. I could, but my wife does not allow me the honor, unless she is there to supervise. I could have been a great chef, but circumstances did not lead me in that direction.
When I was in college at UGA, I worked in the Food Science Department. I was in charge of the abattoir under Mr. Pete Flannigan. In case you are not familiar with that term, an abattoir is a slaughterhouse. We processed cattle and hogs from the school farm and aged it in a large cooler. The beef and pork was then used to teach classes on food processing. When the class was over, we would finish the processing, wrap the meat and put it in the freezer. In order to do this you must have a sharp knife. I knew how to sharpen and maintain my knife. In fact, The UGA infirmary was where I got my first stitches.
Because of what we did, any group on campus that wanted to have a barbecue would have to see us to get their meat. As a result, I got invited to several parties. I would sit up all night helping with the cooking and was well on my way to becoming a great chef. As time moved along, I found myself living in Stockbridge raising three young children. On one occasion I was keeping the kids while my wife was out of town on a trip with her cousins. For lunch one day I decided to fix grilled cheese sandwiches. Rather than take out the waffle iron, I decided to cook them in the frying pan. I heated the pan, added some butter and inserted the fully prepared feast. Now, as most of you know when you fry bread in butter it may turn a little brown. So when our lunch came out of the pan, all three kids, in unison, said Yuk! They refused to eat them. On top of that, they could not wait for Bobbie to get home so they could tell her that I was trying to make them eat burned sandwiches.
I think the first dishwasher we had was when we moved to our house at Lake Dow. It was a wonderful addition that helped tremendously with the chores. It had a lever on the front that when pushed to the left it locked the door while the machine was washing and when pushed to the right the door would open. One day while Bobbie was cooking a roast for dinner, she asked me to check it. I walked over to the oven and, out of habit, pushed the lever to the right to open the door. This particular lever, unlike the dishwasher, put the oven in the clean mode. The door was permanently locked and the temperature went to max. There was nothing left to do, but stand there and watch dinner go up in smoke. My understanding wife lectured me the entire time.
Except for a couple of setbacks, I am confident that I could have been a renowned chef. As it turned out, I am not allowed in the kitchen except on rare occasions.
