Cooking Disasters: The Early Years

I am a firm believer in destiny.

At seven years old, I was already a book addict. A junkie. A thrice weekly visitor to our town library in the summer. I would mow down a book the way some people attack a pizza.

It was destiny that I would end up loving writing books as much as I loved reading them. It was also destiny I would become the haphazard cook I still am today. Food was something that required too much effort. While I always appreciated that effort, it wasn’t something I desired to spend a lot of time on. Fate struck on both fronts on a cold, November day the year I turned seven.

I was walking home from school– note to younger generation: kids used to do this. In my town if you lived under a mile from school, you were a ‘walker’. My home, at 9/10 of a mile, was deemed too close to ride the bus. In second grade, riding the bus was about the coolest thing I could imagine. Destiny– and the expense-conscious school committee– had already determined my fate before I ever hit McDougal Elementary. Already uncool at the age of seven. Sigh.

So, I’m walking home from school after a rainstorm, making sure to stomp through every puddle along the way. At the half mile point, I glanced down and discovered a book, submerged in a mud puddle.

My breath hitched in my throat. As I stooped to pick it up, I prayed it would be a ‘girl’ book. My introduction to Laura Ingalls Wilder was the sopping wet, dripping with mud treasure Little House in the Big Woods. No more dawdling. I rushed home with my saturated find. The cover was already beginning to dissolve. Terrified I wouldn’t be able to read the words, I spent the next hour blotting it dry before setting it on the kitchen radiator to dry out.

Each day after school I would rush home to see if it was finally dry enough to read. And each day, the rapidly expanding book would crinkle on the dry pages, but threaten to fall apart on the wet ones. Curses! After four days, I was going crazy. On my way into the kitchen one morning, I stopped to check the book again. I was supposed to be making toast.

On school days, my mother fought the epic battle to get my brothers out of bed. Consequently, I was allowed to make toast before school. I’d already failed the milk and cereal test (I’d dropped the gallon jug, spewing milk over the kitchen floor). I was seven! It was wicked heavy. To avoid mopping up spilled milk, Mom had taken a calculated risk– her reasoning probably along the lines of ‘how can she possibly eff up the toast’?

Okay, disclaimer here– I’d had some early success with toast. But on that morning . . . with Little House finally dry enough to read . . . at least the first chapter . . . I too, took a calculated risk. How much can I read while my toast is cooking? Before my mother would discover me dawdling and take Laura away.

It turns out the answer was twenty minutes. Because that morning, the toast got stuck. And started burning. And apparently, smoke began filling the house. And the smoke detector went off. When my mother ran to the kitchen to see what the hell was going on, she discovered me, head in my book at the kitchen table. Clueless to the smoke pouring from the toaster. Unalarmed by flames licking at the incinerated remnants of my cinnamon raisin toast. Oblivious to the blaring smoke alarm.

That morning two awesome things happened. I got to eat cold Poptarts on my walk to school. And I finally met Laura Ingalls. And she was way more important than toast. Destiny.