Step 1

My first step in learning how to cook was easy:  I unwrapped the plastic around the cookbook.   Not really knowing where to start and slightly bored, I decided to read the introductory letter from “Betty Crocker,” who I am sure is actually some starving freelancer somewhere.  The letter starts out saying that the cookbook is filled with “the best—the best recipes, the best photos, and the best ideas for how you cook today.”  I am excited about the photos, but then I realize I will always have to compare my outcomes with the Photoshop food in the book.  The letter goes on to say “Betty Crocker is here to help you express your creativity through cooking,” and I’m thinking, “What creativity?  I subsisted on four meals the last year and a half of college.”  Flipping further into the introduction, I am relieved to see that the cookbook is quite user friendly to non-cookers since it defines what “microwave” means, and even has a section called “The Magic of Microwaves.”  However, once I hit the ingredients glossary, I further reminded of why I haven’t conquered cooking, because I do not know how I would get a hold of Hungarian wax chilies in the middle of Wyoming.  I read though the definitions of Enoki and Crimini mushrooms, and I think that they are definitely not the kind of mushrooms that my fellow peers are buying.  When the authors define an oyster mushroom as “graceful,” I close the book, thinking that watching my friends play Call of Duty is better than trying to figure out how an oyster mushroom can ever be graceful.  “I’ll start cooking tomorrow,” I think to myself.