i'm not really feeling two cups.

the obvious thing for me to do today is to blog about DOMA and prop 8.

here's why i'm not doing that.

1. i don't know enough about DOMA to blog about it.
2. i don't know enough about prop 8 to blog about it.

but i'm sure as hell happy that they're gone. 

love is love is love is love.

what i want to blog about is wendy davis and her filibuster last night. but i'm not blogging about that either. abortion is not a debate that i want to get into on my blog. ever.

but i will say this.

pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion.

today is a monumental day for america. and i am proud.

BUT NOW I'M GOING TO BLOG ABOUT COOKING.

so... i'm really bad at cooking.

as the twins would say, "RULLLL BAD."

my mother says that this is a mindset. that if i believe that i can cook, that i'll be an excellent cook.

i've believed for twelve years that i should've gone to hogwarts, i believed really hard, but instead i've spent three years at a private college, four years in a public high school, three in a middle school, and one in an elementary school since then.

no hogwarts. which sometimes still makes me cry.

my dad, the almighty chemistry teacher, takes a more chemical approach, and tells me that cooking is just following directions, like in lab.

remember that time i was a chemsitry major at alma for a semester? i try not to.

i'm now a happy english major and haven't touched a science class in three years.

but if you think about it, cooking really is just like... following directions and adding the right ingredients at the right time. kind of like potions class in harry potter, which always sounded fun. probably because there wasn't too much theory behind it.

more like... properties.

what are the properties of cheese?

1. deliciousness.
2. dairy.
3. more deliciousness.

or like carrots. have you ever looked at a bag of carrots?

ingredients: carrots.

that gets me every single time.

i've digressed.

i really suck at cooking. and it's honestly because i believe that i suck.

i think that i'm good at baking, but i'm not. i love to bake. but i suck at that too.

if it involves making and preparing food, i'm just kind of bad at it.

i bake with the twins a lot, mostly because they're super good at baking things.

exhibit a: yesterday i spent all day at their house watching the avengers, painting my toenails, and baking cookies, and then we went to coach our swim meet against arlington park together. while they were baking, i hovered awkardly in the kitchen, afraid of their hand mixer. which is broken, by the way. i was tasked to hold the cord in its proper place or it wouldn't turn on.

it then started to smell like a broken hair dryer.

i've decided i'm getting emma a mixer for her wedding. emma, if you're reading this, tell me what colour you want. target has some great colours.

while we baked sugar cookies, i did do something. i rolled balls of dough in my hands, put them on a cookie sheet, and smooshed them with sugar on top. and i actually used the handmixer for a little bit until it made me too anxious.

I DID A THING!

hannah and emma did the rest. and the best part was their mom came in and said, "oh emily, you're becoming a real baker!"

thanks. but i don't think you're quite right there, hannah and emma's mom.

for the past few years, my parents have been vacationing without me. which means that my brother cooks for me. normally this turns out pretty well, besides being unbalanced. as in... no salad. or fruit. or vegetables.

normally just a big casserole and we dig in. like real college kids.

i sometimes bake a cake when my parents are gone. which is something i can do fairly well because it really only involves mixing up a mix, putting it in a pan, and turning on an oven. but frosting it... that's another story.

this one time though, my brother totally failed in the cooking department. he was going to make homemade macaroni and cheese (which i have FINALLY mastered after last summer's fail) and he didn't have the recipe on hand.

so he made it up.

bad decision, brocean of the ocean.

he could've called my grandmother, since it's her mother's recipe. but no, he insisted that he knew it from memory. so he made it with one cup of milk instead of four.

we were scraping out black burnt noodles and cheese into our sink for a good half hour.

i've never effed up cooking that badly, i'm happy to say.

the highlight of my cooking career was fashioning baked pasta with only these devices: a plastic bowl, a sink, a microwave, and a dr. pepper can.

you bet your ass that i boiled those noodles in a plastic bowl in a microwave and i drained them through a dr. pepper can.

that's one of the highlights of my entire college existence. besides my eight page paper in less than two hours that got an A.

i think i can attribute most of my bad cooking to this.

1. i'm bad at timing things. like turning on the oven at the proper moment.
2. i never pick a big enough bowl. hence my first two disasters in making macaroni and cheese.
3. i'm afraid of knives.
4. i'm afraid of hot things. like toasters. and ovens. especially ovens.
5. i had a fifth thing but i forgot it. oh well.

today my mother was like, EMILY COME MAKE ENCHILADAS PLEASE 

and i was like, oh shit this won't turn out well

and my mother was like, YOU NEED TO LEARN HOW TO COOK WHEN WE'RE GONE FOR A MONTH YOU CAN'T RELY ON YOUR BROTHER YOUR'E A FEMINIST AND WE LEAVE NEXT WEEK

i love my mother.

so i went downstairs and found my mother with all the ingredients on the counter.

THAT WAS THE FIFTH THING. I NEVER CHECK TO SEE IF I HAVE ALL MY INGREDIENTS.

i remembered the thing!

anyway, my mom had all the ingredients on the counter and the directions and it seemed simple enough. pour the first four ingredients into a bowl. mix them up.

i got out a bowl. put a bunch of sour cream into the bowl, but not without first opening up a thing of sour cream that was absolutely black with mold, to which my mother said, "oh, yes, i guess that sour cream is kind of old" really vaguely.

one time we left applesauce in our fridge for so long it fermented. have you ever eaten fermented applesauce?

don't.

then i started to pour in all the cheese, and my mom was like, no need to measure two cups, just feel it and i'm like, mother i haven't been cooking my entire life, i don't know what two cups feels like unless i'm holding my boobs and she was like, holding your boobs is nice sometimes.

then she hands me a can opener and i realise i've only used them to open bottles, not cans. but i've seen people do it on TV, and i've seen my grandmother do it, so i should be able to open a damn can of sauce, i'm an adult.

then my mom confuses me by telling me, while she's talking on the phone to my grandpa, that i'm doing something wrong. she's like, waving her arms at me and pointing at the directions and at my bowl.

and i'm like, uh, no, first four ingredients in the bowl and mix. why do you want me to do this out of order?

so i point at the four ingredients and then at the directions that says MIX THE FOUR THINGS IN THE BOWL PLEASE and she just kind of shakes her head and moves away.

maybe this is why i'm bad at cooking. i don't cook the way that my mom cooks. which is to feel measurements and do things out of order.

i cook like my dad. like a chemist. or an english major.

how does an english major cook?

"i see these carrots are from africa. what is that significance to the dish as a whole?"

so i ignored my mother and mixed all the things into the big bowl. and then it was just a matter of shoving the stuff into tortillas, making them into enchilada shapes, and pouring enchilada sauce on them.

me: this sauce is really runny.
my mother: i expected it to be thick.
me: well now it's getting thick...
my mother: oh, we were supposed to stir it. oh well. pour two cups of cheese on top.
me: how much is two cups?
my mother: we've been over this. feel it.

so i dumped a bunch of cheese on it and shoved it in the oven, using both of my ovgloves, because ovgloves were made for people like me that are terrified of ovens.

i wear both of them when i make kraft macaroni and cheese.

when i put the enchiladas in the oven my mom clapped and told me she was proud of me.

i then hid in my room until they were done baking.

(but seriously, two ovgloves. the other christmas my mom got my dad an ovglove. and she got him an ovglove. and there has never been so much laughing that early in the morning.)

when we ate the enchiladas forty minutes later, my family told me that they were delicious enchiladas, and i blushed, because i didn't do all of the work, my mom oversaw everything and tried to get me to feel two cups of something, and i'm not too great at accepting compliments.

maybe when i finally learn to cook like a real human being, i'll be able to feel two cups of something.

until then, i'll just dump cheese into stuff because cheese is wonderful and everyone should eat it all the time. (unless you're a vegan. which as a lacto-ovo vegetarian, i totally respect.)

but honestly, i'll probably just settle down with a good husband who will cook for me.

i told my grandma that the other day and the look she gave me was priceless.

down with your gender roles!

also, ladies, if someone ever tells you to get back in the kitchen, you can always say, "sure, the room with all of the knives? i'll go right there and grab them."

and so i just blogged about cooking.

i am now totally in the mood to bake a mediocre cake and put sprinkles on it to cover up my bad frosting job.

HERE'S A YUMMY GAY PRIDE CAKE TO CONNECT COOKING AND DOMA GOING DOWN! WOOOOOOO!

(i also had to google "gay cake" to get it and it was a pretty wise decision. except the picture next to this one was shaped like a penis. penis cake for all.)