by Marijoyce Porcelli

Created on: November 20, 2008

Okay, so I still can't clean. Well, I can but there are always errands to run, books to be read, dogs to be walked, husbands to be fed (well, husband), and so on and so on.

I can cook now, although I prefer meals that will fit in one pot. Still, I can make this or that or the other these days and my meals usually meet with moderate to high success.

Being able to stir, saute, bake and steam wasn't always the case, though, especially in my younger years. In those days the few meals I tried to prepare could have been included in the Guinness Book of World Records under "Natural Disasters."

My foray into the kitchen started when I moved to my first apartment and my mom refused to supply me with any more homemade goodies, like breakfast, lunch and dinner. I started life in my new abode by trying to make a pot of tea. How hard could it be to boil water and dunk in a tea bag?

And water, I thought a little smugly then, was the one thing I couldn't burn. I was right about that part.

What I didn't figure out, until almost too late, is that you can get so busy talking on the telephone about who your ex-boyfriend is dating that water can boil down to nothing, given enough time, and turn into steam. Which can, in turn, scorch the bottom of a kettle blacker and blacker until, at last, small red-hot flames flicker and quickly grow until they start to literally eat the metal tea kettle. This action can then, if not caught in time, lead to blackened walls and ceiling. Not to mention the soul-wrenching and agonized screams by panicking landlords that can be produced by such an action.

Despite my landlord's harsh statement of, "Why don't you just cook a hot dog, burn the whole dang place down and be done with it?" it was only a few weeks later that the cooking bug struck anew. Only this time I had a sure-fire route to success. This time I would follow a recipe.

It was a sunny Saturday morning when I tied the crisp bow in back of my new crisp apron and opened the crisp clean pages of my new cook book. I propped the book open on the counter, as far away as possible from the sink that held then, as my sink usually does now, a load of dirty dishes. (I was still trying to learn to cook, learning to clean would have to come later I thought then. Little did I know that latter talent would never rear its tidy head.)

I continued to flip through the cook book's pages until I saw it. There in bold black print accompanied by a glossy color photo of a heavy crock filled with a delicious looking concoction

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