I haven’t cooked much lately, not that anyone’s complaining.
My kids have been all over town with end of school / start of summer
activities, and take-out has been our best friend. That said, sometimes I can’t
even pull that off. Between my career and parental duties, I’m just happy if I
get a shower. Working from home through COVID has been great for more work/life
balance and has had its advantages, but more times than not, I find myself
looking up to realize it’s 8pm and I still haven’t eaten.
Enter, frozen food. A delicacy of my youth that my
pretentious Gen Z span all but shun.
They come with instructions that correlate to the wattage
rating of your microwave, but I prefer to live on the edge and go off memory from
the last time time I nuked a mini pizza and let ‘er rip. Only my memory can’t
be trusted. And that right there is the root cause of many cooking hypotheses
that have been disproven inside the cavity of my microwave. My latest
highlights the difference a mere thirty seconds can make on low grade cheese.
Left: 00:02:30, Right: 00:03:00
I call these thirty seconds the “avocado effect.” You know that
mysterious sweet spot an avocado has between rock solid and guacamole gold? Ya,
well, every microwave has one too. And apparently mine is 00:02:30 for a Red
Barron four cheese mini pizza.
Will I remember that factoid the next time I nuke a pizza? Not
likely.
I no longer beat myself up for my “cooking” fails. In fact,
I half expect them to happen. And most of the time I still eat whatever I messed up no matter how bad it looks because I’m also extremely lazy and have low food standards. But this time there was no hope. I couldn’t even pry the reflective cooking disk from the crusted over cheese lava.
So, I set the smoking charcoal puck on the counter to cool
off before tossing into the trash and tried again because I’m no quitter. Unfortunately,
I was about 5 seconds short of hiding what had gone down from Kid #2 as she strolled into the kitchen with boyfriend in tow, thus sealing my fate for yet another round of ridicule over my lack of cooking abilities. Again….
All that mattered was I finally ate. It was a glorious, heart burn inducing experience that I will likely repeat six months from now, and the fact that no one bothered me for the four minutes it took to scarf it down was worth every penny of the burnt pizza I wasted.