Cooking

My little sister just got her permit three days ago. This has made all of us nervous, particularly me and my father because it is our cars she is practicing on since my mother's is currently more or less in a coma. My father is even more nervous than I am because, well, he was the one who took my sister for her very first driving lesson. Yesterday afternoon I told my sister I would take her driving, so we went to inform my father we were going out. He immediately jumped up from his chair and said, "Oh no, no no no. I will go. Not you. No. Highly dangerous. You are not equipped. Your sister will kill both of you and your mother will kill me. Unacceptable." So I said, "Okay then. I guess you two will go and I can stay here and make myself food."
My father immediately sat down again and squinted at me accusingly. "Explain 'make yourself food."
"I was thinking I would cook some eggs."
"Oh no. No, no, no, no. You'll burn the house down. Kill yourself. No more house. Your mother will kill me. Now I can't leave you alone..."

My father now faced a terrible choice. Which was more potentially fatal? His teenage daughter's second attempt at driving, or his 24 year old daughter's attempt at cooking?

In the end the problem was solved when he forced me into the backseat of my own car while he taught my sister how to drive, effectively preventing me from touching a stove AND monitoring my sister's every move.

A good solution, clearly. But what stands out to me here is the fact that my father believed me making myself eggs was equally as or MORE dangerous than my sister's first attempts at driving. It's a problem that has plagued me all my life, that I have inherited from my mother. Between the two of us, we've set at least 7 fires in various places--stove, oven, toaster, microwave. On one notable occasion, I set a salami sandwich on fire.
Another time while making cupcakes I mixed up sugar with salt. That is a lot of salt.
Knowing my weakness, one time while baking a cake I tried laying out all the ingredients before even beginning, checking them off a list, making sure I had the correct amounts of the correct things all in a line on the counter. When I took my cake out of the oven awhile later, I discovered that it was completely flat. Completely. I was very puzzled, until I turned around and found that all of the flour was still sitting nicely on the counter, waiting to be added.
Pasta. Oh, pasta. I can't tell you how much pasta and how many pots have been burned and destroyed in this household, between my mother and myself. We have an attention problem. Set the temperature on high so the water boils faster, forget we are making pasta two minutes later, occasionally go so far as to leave the house, return and discover blackened bits and one livid father/husband threatening to beat our heads in with his beloved and dead cook ware.
I have lost so much blood over cutting carrots and tomatoes and chicken and yes, even opening a tin of biscuit dough. You know those easy open Pillsbury tubes? Not so easy open to everyone.

These days, I get much of my food by wandering downstairs whenever I am hungry and announcing loudly what I am going to cook for myself. Wherever my father is in the house, he will come running, shouting, "I'll do it! I'll do it for you! Get back into bed! Watch TV! Go to the mall! Come back and it shall be all done!"

As far as I'm concerned, this is a perfect system, because I hate cooking as much as it hates me.

This evening I was thinking about making something from a recipe I found that sounded good, but I realized what a TERRIBLE DECISION that would be, and figured it was much safer to write about cooking than actually attempt it.

I think I'll wave the recipe around my father and declare loudly how I am about to start trying it out.