by Kiki Mcdonald

Created on: May 09, 2008

Smoke on the Water

My kids have grown up thinking that the smoke alarm is a kitchen timer. Whenever the alarm goes off (pretty much every night), they yell out, "Mom, dinner's ready!" ,on the off chance that I had stabbed a steak knife in my ear and was therefore unaware of the ceaseless string of piercing beeps emanating from the kitchen. The kids don't even look away from the cartoon they are absorbed in as they yell out this obvious bit of information. I guess they operate on blind faith that I would alert them if the kitchen was engulfed in flames.

Part of the problem is my cooking, yes, but I can also place a bit of the blame on the size of our kitchen. It is tiny. Tiny. A galley kitchen in which you can cook on the stove, operate the microwave, forage through the refrigerator and load the dishwasher all without ever having had to take a single step. It is a kind of like cooking on a boat, though devoid of the calming sounds of the ocean. Not that I have ever actually cooked on a boat. I guess that even if I did have the pleasure of being able to hear the sea from my kitchen, the joy would be short lived, as the calm would inevitably be shattered by the harpy-like shrieks of the smoke alarm.

It is not that the smoke alarm is going off because I burn things all the time, though admittedly, I have been known to forget about the rolls in the oven occasionally. And by occasionally, I mean every single time I cook bread. Notice I did not say" bake" bread. No, part of the problem is that the layer of charred cheese on the bottom of the oven often heats up and causes smoke to billow from the oven. This is the result of what some may consider an overabundance of frozen pizzas being cooked for dinner. One of my specialties.

My husband doesn't seem to mind my lack of culinary prowess as his mother is a much, much worse cook than I am. He grew up on a steady diet of sandwiches and Space Food Sticks. She cooks twice a year, on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is two times too many.

My husband will occasionally complain about the lack of variety in our dinner menu, as I only have a handful of dishes I can make reasonably well. But, he does not complain often because when he does, I suggest he might like to try his hand at making dinner. He only has one dish. One. When he does complain, I glare at him until he turns into a small pile of smoldering cinders, which again sets off the smoke alarm.

Learn more about this author, Kiki Mcdonald.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.