Military Dictator in the Kitchen

While she was here, my mom believed it was her mission to teach me how to cook. I know how to cook, I've been cooking for myself for years now, but my mom wanted me to learn her recipes, which she deems more "civil" food than what I make...that's funny, I didn't know my food was uncivilized.

Saturday night, she wanted to eat in so I could be her sous-chef and learn from the master. But it was more like working with a dictator! This woman is ridiculous in the kitchen. I felt like we were in a war zone or something!

Mushrooms were flying around all over the place. All my plates and bowls and pots were suddenly in use and in and out of the sink and drying rack. I found myself confronted with asparagus and carrots and celery and tomatoes. My mom was like, cut this, slice that, why aren't you working faster?! I felt so overwhelmed! I was like, why can't we just calm down and we go through things slowly so you can actually talk me through what you're doing. And my mom's like, no it's all about efficiency in the kitchen, you can't learn by talking, you learn by doing. Granted, this is true but she wasn't even telling me what we were doing, she was just ordering me around!

I couldn't keep up with her. I would be working on the mushrooms and she was like, you're too slow and just steal the mushrooms away from me! And I'm used to slowly and carefully dicing garlic before I throw it on the pan with my veggies but my mom just smashed the garlic with her knife as if it was nothing and threw it onto the pan!

She was so focused on being ultra-efficient while cooking that she yelled at me when I suggested using my microwave's timer to make the steak! She had said the steak needed a minute on each side so she was intently watching the microwave and was going to lay the stay on the pan when the numbers changed. And I said, why don't we just set the timer and I pressed the timer button, and she yelled at me for messing with the microwave clock! It was funny afterward because she realized I was right and she was wrong (yes!) but it was really intense in the moment because she thought I messed up the efficiency of the whole cooking process.

I was exhausted after cooking with her. I would say it was comparable to following a policeman around during a sting operation. Intense, fast-paced, lots of yelling, knives and other things being thrown around. Yup, it's quite the experience learning how to cook from my mom, the kitchen dictator.

The final product! Yummy in my tummy eh?