TMI Questions: Kiss the Cook!

Someone’s in the kitchen with my heinie

Someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh

Someone’s in the kitchen with my heinie

Stuffing my big old hole…

(Sung to tune of ‘Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah’)

Sigh.  Yes, there is one hole more important than ‘my big old hole’.  And that be my pie hole.  It likes to get stuffed, too.

I love food.  Comfort food being the best.

I love making mashed potatoes.  And that is pretty much the extent of my culinary repertoire. Still, that has not prevented my delusional self from wasting expensive ingredients in the hopes of becoming a chef.  In my wake?  Lots of burnt, under-cooked food and a sink full of hard to clean pots and pans.

Still, I soldier on…

TMI QUESTIONS:

Questions designed to reveal Too Much Information

Link: http://tmiquestions.blogspot.com/

TMI Questions: Kiss the Cook!

How good of a cook are you?

Pretty average.  I aspire to be a bit more, but, sigh, am too lazy to actually do everything one needs to do in order to be a better cook.  You know, like take classes, pay attention to recipes, and, ummm… actually cook. As in, on a regular basis; familiarity breeds efficiency breeds well-prepared food.

There was a period of time when I was into meat and potatoes meals featuring heavy gravies (I thought I was Betty Crocker and that was the way to a man’s heart) but I took a lot of short cuts and hence don’t consider that actually cooking.

And that pretty much sums up my skill level in the kitchen.  If I put in a little more effort I might be better.  I certainly enjoy it and enjoy learning more about food preparation.  However, I do not consider opening cans and heating things or boiling water real cooking. 

Who taught you how to cook?

Self-taught.  And in the beginning I was not very smart about it at all. 

Frequently, with my theater schedule, I would eat things straight out of the can, usually late at night, lying on the floor with a tiny black and white television providing the only light in the room.  I would then use the can as an ashtray before falling into an anxiety-induced coma.

A collection of cans would form around my mattress on the floor… mostly pork and beans, or green beans.  The cigarette butts that filled them adding to the room’s ambiance.

If the gods be kind, at some point I would end up getting laid, and before the person I dragged home woke up in the morning I would tidy up the place and those cans would disappear.

Yeah, I was a pig.  And not the fun sexy kind, either.

Now the kitchen is my favorite room in any home.  And it doesn’t need to be much or very large.  But I have come to respect it.  It offers me a lot of comfort.

Who does the cooking in your home?

Me. 

Though, I actually spend more time preparing meals for my dogs than I do for myself.  Their food involves a sweet potato-based dry food which needs to be pulverized in a Cuisinart, before adding crushed cooked carrot, chunks of lean white chicken breast with a bit of broth, and a teaspoon of a special powder containing glucosamine among other helpful things.  Mix in a bit of hot water before microwaving for eight seconds, stirring occasionally.  Be sure to check the temperature before serving.

Yeah.  Kind of nuts when it comes to those dogs.

Me?  Boil a box of dry pasta, open and heat a can of sauce. Sit in front of television and consume.

Yeah. It’s a life.

Do you cook more or eat out more?

Currently eating out a lot.  Maybe, way too much.  (And thank God!)

But I’m in that whole ‘getting to know you’, ‘making an effort’ dating mode; which I enjoy immensely (I can’t stress that last part enough – I am a fortunate schmuck). 

But it is expensive. 

Still.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Restaurants are neutral ground for testing the ‘I can put up with that’, ‘that is not a dealbreaker’ kind of conversations. 

You know, like:

“I was a big slut before I met you.”

“Well, how big of a slut.”

“Umm.  Known in several states, big.  I sort of used to blog about it and kept an excel spreadsheet detailing my exploits.”

“Really?  Huh.”

“You want me to send you a link to the blog?”

“No, but… You can pay the check now. I have to go home.  I think I left one of my cats on the stove.”

Are you more of a cook or dessert maker?

Cook.

Not much into desserts.  Though I did go through a period when I was making these huge, multi-layered cakes with fruit fillings and the most awesome butter cream frosting made with Wondra flour.  They were delicious and frequently quite beautiful.  I even started a photo collection of them.

I began making them for other people – birthdays, anniversaries, mid-life circumcisions…

Then I got drafted for a wedding at this resort in Duluth.  The ceremony took place on the shores of Lake Superior.  The woman actually rented me a suite with a stove so I could bake her wedding cake on the premises the morning of the wedding. 

I made the mistake of bringing my OCD business partner with.  He’s a control freak and basically took over the actual cake creation after he’d obsessed about it most of the week and then peppered me with trouble shooting / what if scenarios the entire day before the actual wedding.  He took control of the whole thing and I just stood around wearing a Charlie Brown ‘life sucks’ moon face.

I sucked it up.  But that experience ruined cake baking for me, and I have never made one since.

What was your worst/funniest cooking moment?

Thank you for asking.

This was clueless, eat-out-of–the-can, me. 

A theatre company that I was part of had a tightknit core of eight actors who selected the plays each season and were featured in all the shows imploded mid-season during our second year of production, due to personality clashes and creative differences.

Unfortunately, we had booked theater space for the remaining productions and that meant, not only was the company on the hook for honoring those rental contracts, but that meant the company would lose all that down payment money.  We’d also made a commitment to several other actors who had planned their theatre season based on our season.  So, I decided to host a tiny dinner party, inviting the two members I was most interested in continuing to work with (who happened to be gay and still speaking to me). 

Being a clueless clod, I decided that creating a salad bar would be the foolproof way to go.  Unfortunately (for my guests), my only experience with salad greens centered on iceberg lettuce.  I also had no idea how much three people could eat, so I bought three heads, just to be safe.  Celery, carrots, green peppers, etc.  Anything I could remember seeing at a salad bar I bought and chopped up.  I ended up with enough food to feed a small battalion or all the customers during a dinner shift at the local Sizzler.  If I’d had a sense of humor about myself at the time I would have laughed, but instead, of course I internalized the experience, ashamed of my lack of common sense. 

Fortunately one of the guys kind of knew I was a clueless oaf and he brought some wonderful weird beet-based soup.  He was also the only one interested in soldiering on, honoring the commitments the company had made.  He played George in my production of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and went on to be my best friend for twenty years. 

Then there was the lesson of ‘Never cook fish on a first date’. 

Turns out cooking a meal for someone you don’t know very well on a first date is a bad idea.  Number one, you are in your home, so there is potential for you to come off as a sort of tragic Tennessee William’s heroine, especially if you play cryptic ballet barre exercise music on an old phonograph while explaining why your Christmas tree is still twinkling in your bedroom mid-March.

Secondly, one tends to over-think one’s table settings, making for a Victorian age sense of propriety not normally associated with hoping to get a little something-something at the end of the night. 

Yeah.  Dude fled my apartment before dessert arrived.

Can you blame him?   

I think he said something about leaving one of his cats on the stove... or something.

What's your best dish?

Vegetable stir fry with brown rice, I guess.

I like making spaghetti, too, but cheat.

And grilled cheese with tomato basil soup (again, I cheat). 

I used to make a kick-ass chicken and dumplings (cheated).

And soups. Homemade!  The best.  (No cheating!)

Is revenge a dish best served cold?

I don’t believe in seeking revenge.  I simply offer up my experience to the universe and let karma take its toll.

Sometimes it works a bit too well.

I had a production of ‘Boys in the Band’ where the cast mutinied a week before opening (after all the hard work had been done).  It was based on greed and devastated me (also, I was informed that I had hurt their feelings). I ended up moving to the middle of Iowa for a year to recoup, before fleeing to L.A.  

During the three years that I was away?  Three of the cast members died – two of which were the biggest instigators of the coup!   (One of them hurled himself into the mighty Mississippi!)

And those were only the ones I heard about.  Who knows what happened to the rest?

That was proof to me that evil begets evil and that the universe has a way of taking care of these things. 

These days?  I am very careful not to wish people ill.  I may not wish them well, but know better than to wish them ill.  That shit will only come back and haunt you, baby.

Is the best way to a man's heart truly through his stomach? 

No.  That would be his anus.

Trust me on this.

It’s called a prostate massage.

Bonus

Have you made whoopee in the kitchen?

Yes.  And so what.  Fucking on a kitchen counter isn’t that big of a deal.

But being fucked while bent over a running dishwasher? 

Now that’s some fancy cooking.

Which foods have you used to spice up your love life?

Is Gin a food?