Never Cook in Someone Else's Kitchen by Paula

COOKING IN OTHER PEOPLE’S KITCHENS


Walt will never let me live down the fact that when we were dating I would never cook in the kitchen in his apartment. I would prepare food and bring it over. I would eat the dinners he prepared. But I wouldn’t cook in his kitchen.

We are often the self-designated cooks when we vacation with family. It is a chance for us to share our latest accomplishments as well as an opportunity to thank the host family for the accommodations. However, Walt never goes anywhere where he will be cooking without a full battery of condiments and tools, And why is that? Because no one else’s kitchen has the tools and ingredients that you are used to working with in your own kitchen. Whatever you make in someone else’s kitchen will never turn out perfectly the way you have mastered it in your own kitchen.

This past year, when I went to Hawaii with my Mom and Aunt to stay with my sister for the month of March, I offered to cook for all the ladies. It is a pleasure for me to cook. I like to eat well, and I knew no one else in the group was going to bother much about meals. I took my recipes with me and gave Elise a shopping list to have some ingredients on hand when I first got there. Since my dating days with Walt, I have become more flexible and willing to meet the challenge of a foreign kitchen. I was not quite up to the challenge of Elise’s kitchen, however. We even had to borrow equipment from the neighbors in order to cook some of the recipes. Nothing I cooked turned out the way it was meant to and was sub par by my standards. Things that I had cooked many times were just so-so. I was disappointed, though I think the others were just happy to have a meal prepared for them so they didn’t have to cook.

The moral: Don’t ever offer to cook in someone else’s kitchen and expect to impress.