epikivel

Shards
2001-11-28 05:34:20 (UTC)

The Ham Fiasco

Dinner was lovely. Harry was over. I have a ham story.

The Story of the Ham, by me
I'm down at the coffee shop with Jon, and he asks what I want for dinner. As usual,
I don't have a preference and don't feel like making a decision, so he tells me
there is a ham in the fridge and tells me to go up and make it. Well, I'm freaking
out, I don't know how to cook at all, and I am not even really allowed to use the
stove at home! I don't want to seem too much like an idiot though, so I go upstairs
and get it out of the fridge. I am really confused from the get go, because there
are three different sets of directions on this huge hunk of ham that is bigger than my
head. I had to open it haphazardly with a butcher knife for lack of a scissors, and
right away, I am just flustered. There is this brown clothy thing on top that I can't
identify, and figuring out how long to cook it for requires multiplication in my head,
which I just cannot deal with. I start to preheat the oven and realize I'm not even
sure how you know when it's ready, so I run into the bedroom and call down to the
shop. "Jon!" I say, "How do you know when the oven is preheated?" He says
not to worry about it, and do I need anything else? "Jon!" I say, "There was this
brown thing on top that doesn't look like it's part of the ham, what do I do?" It has
something to do with the juice he says, just ignore it. I hang up and mosy back into
the kitchen. The directions say to tightly cover the ham with tin foil, but the tin foil
doesn't stretch across the whole thing, so I have to work to cover it all, stressing
about whether it's tight enough. When that ordeal is over, I try to shove the damn
thing in the stove only to find out that it doesn't fit. I let out a groan, shut the over
off, and run down to the shop. "The ham doesn't fit!" I say, "You go up and do it!"
I read a crappy novel to pass the time, and finally Jon comes back. It's in the
oven he says. I run back upstairs and pop a video in. A few hours later, Jon calls.
"DId you put the glaze on?" he asks. I stare blankly at the wall. "Glaze?" "Yeah,"
he says, "You were supposed to do it an hour ago." I run into the kitchen and fling
the oven open, only to find that it completely lacks all heat. I look at the knobs and
discover that the oven is NOT ON. It is OFF. Nervously, I dial the number to the
shop again. "Jon?" I ask when he answers, "Was the ham supposed to be
cooked?" "Yes!" he says. "Well, it's still raw," I say. He thought I had left it on
when I ran to the shop, but I hadn't, for fear of somehow the house catching on fire
while I was away. So it is almost time for everyone to be home and there is no
dinner. I just crank up the oven to bunches of hundreds of degrees and we let the
thing sizzle for awhile.

In the end, it all worked out. It was very good ham, no thanks to me. I have no
culinary skills whatsoever, and come to think of it, my cleaning and sewing skills
aren't too honed either...In conclusion, I basically have no skills at all that are
considered basic female skills. Ha! Who needs 'em? Well...perhaps someday I
will...but I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

Right now, my boyfriend is online, so I am going to go enjoy him.




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