A few days ago I decided to make an omelet. My idea of a perfect omelette, and I'm sure that yours is close, is soft, fluffy, and intact, with no more than three fillings and no less than three eggs. Intact is my resounding message here. I consider myself an expert at the over-medium egg. To me there is nothing simpler than flipping one egg. One egg is typically the rough circumference of my spatula. One egg does not fuss. A three-egg omelet, however, does. You see, my omelet was fine and fine and fine, and then it came time to flip it. I watched the omelet. The bottom of the omelet happily browned itself. All would go to hell if I were to wait another minute (second, nanosecond). So I approached it with two spatulas, lifted, and thought positive thoughts. This resulted in a three-egg scramble! It turned out to be okay, yes, and relatively delicious, but it was not my intended target, and I assume that in cooking it's important to arrive (roughly) at your intended target.

So I directed my efforts at building my omelet-knowledge basis rather than going in with blind faith again. I typed "how to flip an omelet" into Google. It gave me a link to eHow, the same website that had, earlier in my life, taught me how to crochet. I figured this was trust enough. eHow.com suggested:

"Move the pan back and forth, watching the omelet slide. When you feel comfortable with its movement, quickly move the pan forward, dip the front, and flick up the pan. The omelet will slide up and out of the pan. Quickly dip the pan again with another flick to catch the omelet."

No. Just no. Where would the omelet go during its time "out of the pan"? Into the air? I was not interested in making flying food, or salvaging said food when it inevitably ended up on stove, counter, or floor. No thanks. I abandoned the internet for good old Betty Crocker. The cookbook claims to teach "Everything You Need to Know to Cook Today". Well, maybe if I had read it when I bought it. But it was a good resource for me in the scarce occasions that I did cook in the past. Today, Betty Crocker informs me that an omelet doesn't need to be flipped at all! What a joyous occasion.

So I went at it. I cooked up some chicken sausage and green pepper, added three eggs and a bit of shredded mozzarella cheese and let cook. Then I followed the described method of folding one side of the omelet one third of the way and then sliding the omelet onto a plate, making sure to fold it once more so that it looked like a burrito of egg. This was... partly successful. The omelet looked dubiously moist and I'm aware of the dangers of salmonella. So I cheated and threw the thing back on the fire for another minute. The final product was somewhat overly-browned but delicious and salmonella-free, yet still moist on the inside! Behold.


Here's to striving for perfection with every try.

Well, we haven't gotten off to a very great start. Even the occasional chef will admit that cooking requires plenty of tools. These include: dishes, utensils, pots, pans, fill-in-the-blank. The chef is at an admitted disadvantage without them. The student chef is at an admitted disadvantage without a dishwasher. Yes, unfortunate of circumstances, the dishwasher is broken. After pressuring the detergent-clogged appliance to work three times and wondering whether it was so quiet because it was so good, I e-mailed the maintenance with a full historical account of my struggles with the pretentious, fancy thing. Being the optimist that I am, I assumed that they would come and fix it the next day, and then the next, and the next. The dishes piled up.

This morning, I finally succumbed and washed 80% of all the dishes, utensils, pots, pans, fill-in-the-blank that we own. So exhausting and time-consuming was this terrible chore that I had no energy for anything but a bowl of toasted honey oats.



Tiny, tiny steps is the way I walk, folks.

My mother is Superwoman. In the fall of 1993, she took a hiatus from her home and country to chase her dream of becoming a film maker in a city where she knew neither a person nor the language. She had two children, one husband, six classes. And she cooked. She cooked most every night. From rice to chicken to fish she journeyed to locate in land-locked Southeastern Ohio to satisfy our Middle-Eastern seafood requirement. In 3x2 feet of dirt bordered by red building bricks, with her hands she nurtured herbs and vegetables that went into our eager stomachs. She resisted the temptation to give my three year old chocolate-addict of a sister even more of it. And at the end of it all, she would wash the dishes and open up her textbooks late into the night.

Fast forward to 2004. Yours truly makes a similar decision to leave her home and her country to pursue her dream of becoming... an undeclared college freshman. The parallels are already absent. My first year I ate blessedly at a wonderful place known as the campus dining hall. Chicken tenders every week was heaven at 17. Grilled cheese? Delicious and filling. Not a problem. And then, year two was marked by a move into an empty, grown up apartment and an empty kitchen. I bought my microwave-safe plates and discount grill and was ready to go. With the exception of one occasion that morphed into a scarring episode of burnt steak, cooking was not my priority even as I transitioned to countless other apartments, from undergraduate to graduate school. It has been five long years of ramen, frozen waffles, and endless takeout. The only savior has been when I visit home and eat... my mother's cooking.

We've entered a new decade, I have a Trader Joe's not a five minute walk away from my apartment, and it is time for me to cook.