The day I tried to cook

I saw a recipe in Real Simple the other day for roasted potatoes and steak. It looked easy enough. I recognized all the ingredients. Marina loves potatoes. It was perfect.

So there I am browning the meat on the stove and it's looking good. Then the directions said to finish cooking the meat in the oven. Easy. All right.

About 20 minutes later, a burning smell, a smell that's very familiar to me, invaded the kitchen. The potatoes were toast. But the meat was ready and it looked good. Also, the girls were fighting over plastic horses.

After trying to save the potatoes and evenly distributing horses, I went back to cut the meat. Only. I forgot the pan had been in the oven. I grabbed it. I held it for a good 8 seconds before I realized my flesh was being charred.

I screamed, ran it under water, grabbed a frozen bag of corn and went along with my business. But it wasn't getting better, so I went to Windmill Farms for some homeopathic relief.

The dude at the store looked at my hand and basically said get the hell out of there and go to the doctor.

I only try to cook once every few months and what happens to me? I get second degree burns. My hand was wrapped in gauze with an Ace bandage on top of that. It looked very much like a big mitt on my right hand. The same hand I use to type. And take notes. And get dressed. And change diapers.

I went in to work for a few hours but I was totally useless. Matt was with the girls and I would be totally useless to them, too.

So you know what I did? I went to the movies. I went and I watched the Julia Child movie and waited and waited for her to have some sort of kitchen accident and she did not.

And the lesson I took from all this was that I need to look into French cooking.