Men's Guide to Cooking

     It's always been common knowledge that men can't cook; but I have decided to change all that. Yes. Today men, you will learn to cook. Why you ask? Well, the next time someone says guys can't cook, you can hold your head up high and confidently state, "Well! I don't know about anyone else, but *I* can cook!". Now the very first thing we'll need is a kitchen. Since most guys don't own a kitchen you'll probably have to use someone else's kitchen, but I would advise you to use someone else's kitchen when that someone else isn't around. If that someone else is around, she will most likely not be inclined to let you use her kitchen because she will be afraid you will make a mess and not clean it up, but being a guy, you'll do such a good job there won't even be a mess to clean up. The next step would be to choose a recipe out of a cookbook. Since this is probably the first cooking experience you've had in your entire life, I'll choose a recipe for you. Hmm... does apple pie sound good to you?? Yum yum. It sounds good to me too. Ok men, let's, preheat the oven, roll up our sleeves, and uh... get housewife-ish. First, we have to make the crust for the pie. The first time I tried this recipe I presumed I could mix all the ingredients for the crust and pie filling in the same bowl and just throw it in, but I have since learned that you are supposed to make each separate. Although that may seem like a lot of work for nothing, believe me, it makes a biiig difference. The recipe for the crust calls for 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 2/3 cup shortening, and 6 to 7 tablespoons cold water. If I remember right, my mother always got all of the ingredients out before starting, but it's been a long time since mom has made apple pie and I have learned it saves much more table space if you get out the ingredients as you need them. Sheesh, wouldn't ya think she would have thought of that? Ok, mix everything together in a bowl. Although the dough may look tasty, it isn't. Now the filling, *that's* what's good; but we'll get to that later. Roll the mixed dough into a ball and put it on the kitchen counter. You should probably wipe the counter off in case there's any moldy food or bacteria growing on it. Don't worry about it too much though, after all, what you can't see won't hurt you now will it? After contemplating how to flatten the dough ball, I finally figured out a quick, easy way to do it. All I had to do was go out into the garage, get the flattest thing I could find (which was a pretty clean board), get my handy-dandy hammer, set the flat object on the dough, and pound away. Pretty efficient eh? I know. Now you're supposed to get the flat dough into the pie pan. I tried, but it sort of fell apart as I was trying to get it in. I did think of pounding the ball of dough after it was in the pan, but I noticed that would sort of flatten the pan too so I decided not to do it that way. Now we can start on the pie filling. This part of the recipe calls for 2 pounds of apples, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, two teaspoon ground cinnamin, ground nutmeg, 2 tablespoons butter. In the cookbook it says to peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. It would take all day for a guy to accomplish this task. (not to mention all the knife wounds which would occur) I found that this entire job can be done with handyman conveinience tools. To peel the apples get out your sanding machine and sand off those old apple peels. To core the apples, just get a drill with a large bit. Now it took a long time to think of a conveinient, efficient way to slice the apples, but as always, I did think of a way. Get out your blender and throw your apples in. It doesn't slice them persay, but it does grind them up very nicely and that's probably what you wanted to do in the first place. It says in the book to mix all the dry and wet ingredients in seperate bowls and then mix them together. However, it's much quicker to mix it all together, so let's do. If you discover you don't have an ingredient, remember you can always implement the power of improvision. For instance, I noticed that I didn't have any ground nutmeg or lemon juice so I substituted the next best things: Ground thyme and grape juice. Now is that good improvision or is that good improvision? Ok, now put the apple stuff in the crust stuff and cover it with a lot of butter and sugar stuff, then put the stuff in the oven. The book says to turn the oven to 375 degrees, but the hotter the oven is the more quickly it will cook, right? Just as I thought. Now all you have to do is wait for the pie to get done. While you're waiting I would suggest taking the batteries out of your smoke detectors and grabbing a reliable fire extinguisher; the situation could get a little hazy before we're done here. The hardest part of making a pie is telling when it's done cooking. Housewives have this thing where they stick knives in what they cook to see if it's done, but I couldn't figure out how you could possibly benefit by sticking a knife in your food. The only thing I thought of was that they maybe wanted to check to see if whatever they were cooking was still alive, but I'm just not sure. The method I use to see when food is done is to wait until you see thin wisps of smoke protruding from the oven door; then you *know* it's done. No guessing, no checking, no uncertainty; just fully cooked food. Congratulations men, you've just made yer very first apple pie. We should be proud of ourselves. We should also let someone else sample the fruits of our labor first. I suggest someone you don't like very well. Firstly, you won't feel so badly when you receive harsh criticism for your product, and secondly, because your food may not be 100% safe and you won't feel so bad if someone you don't like much goes to the emergency room on account of you.