Achieving Kitchen Failure

I have many stories from which I could have chosen to illustrate how good I am at accomplishing Kitchen Failure. There are classes and subclasses of thee stories: Things Which Can Go Wrong When You Get Distracted and Forget You Have Started Cooking Something (mostly, in case you were curious, burning to the point of carbonization); Dreadful Things Which Can Happen When Company is Coming And You Have Temporarily Misplaced Your Brain In General, Let Alone The Part That You Use to Cook With (extra-pink poultry seems to be a specialty of mine in such situations); Ways to Ruin Bread;

And then there was the evening when I started by ruining a three-course Thai-recipe meal (still not sure what I did, and haven't tried Thai again since) and ended by smoking a pizza in the downstairs oven because I had no idea that it cooks at least 100 degrees (Farenheit) too hot at all times, but the real piece-de-resistance, the pinnacle of my achievements that day, was when I exploded a pyrex pan while it was in my (hot-pad-protected) hand.

The explosion was sort of loud and attention-getting, and since our "kitchen" is really more of a hall coming off the living room, Mom was close enough to appreciate that something really dramatic had happened. "Are you all right?" my mother asked, without turning around.

"Yup," I said.

"Is the pizza all right?"

By a miracle, it was. The pan which had exploded had been directly beneath the pizza pan, which meant that the pizza itself was completely protected from the shards.

"Is the oven all right?"

"Uh- yeah. I, er, ah, just sort of exploded one of your Pyrex pans."

"Oh, that's OK. Your dad doesn't like having so many of them around anyway."

It took a little more explanation on her part before I understood that part of the reason for why he objected to having them around is that Pyrex-ware of the last five years or so is super-prone to breakage and, indeed, to exploding. So I was just doing a sort of controlled demolition. After a manner of speaking.

At any rate, I do believe that this laid-back attitude on my mother's part during the incident exemplifies a general attitude which in turn has contributed a large chunk of what has made-- no, better say allowed-- me to become a competent cook. Which is to say, that a moment of kitchen failure does not in any way, shape, or form equal or portend life-long kitchen failure. It is limited to the kitchen, to the night it happens (in the case of ruined supper) and sometimes even to the hour it happens. I have never been made to feel that I was less competent as a human being, or unlovable, or even that I would never become a good cook, because of anything that I have exploded or burned or otherwise ruined.

And this is why it was helpful: because the ability-- the emotional permission-- to fail at any learning task without your ego getting stepped on equals the ability, the permission, to experiment and learn and grow. It is much more essential than, say, a cast-iron skillet or even a fork (which is the Ultimate Utensil-- a point I will prove at a later date). I believe that cooks can be permanently disabled by having someone in the house (ahem, like themselves) who thinks that they are a failure as a person if they burn dinner. On the OTHER hand, the glorious thing about this principle is that, if you are willing to practice, it is a gift you can give to yourself.