Life Skills

One of my favorite ways to pass the time while standing in line at the grocery store is to analyze the contents of the carts of the people around me. I like the incongruity of it. Gazing up and down the lines, it’s not unusual to see a cart containing a sack of generic Froot Loops the size of a duvet cover, plus a few shiny, well-chosen apples. I imagine sharing meals with these people, dining on fare concocted solely from what they’ve got in their carts. The social activity would have to complement the menu. I think: “Lady, I’m coming to your house for breakfast! I love generic Froot Loops! Let’s you and me eat ’em dry by crumbly handfuls in front of the tube while we take in The View! Is Star Jones married yet, or what? (Munch-munch-munch.) Do you think she’ll wear Payless shoes to the wedding?”

Yes, it is possible to dream up an entire relationship with someone in the span of time it takes to get through the checkout. But part of the game is never, ever talking to the people behind the cart. It’s important to tell the story of the cart all by yourself. I don’t want to hear that this worn-looking woman has five kids who eat through that massive bag of cereal bowlful by bowlful, like dog food. In my mind, she’s an eccentric who lives entirely on snack chips and apples. She can’t deal with utensils, not since she was involved in a walk-by stabbing at the Old Country Buffet salad bar. She did her time all right, paid her debt to society. But she can’t trust herself with cutlery in a world where certain folks think it’s all right to take the last of the low-cal French.

Still, I had to break my long-standing rule of silence the other day when a cart rolled up behind me that contained the following: forty-eight cans of refrigerated biscuit dough, three economy-size jars of tomato basil Prego spaghetti sauce, a pillow sham of grated cheddar, one can of Diet Coke, and a pack of Dentyne Ice.

I immediately came up with several options for a back story, but none rang true. Spaghetti sauce wrestler? That explained the Diet Coke and the breath-freshening gum, but not the cheese and biscuit dough. In my list of possible explanations, I had gotten all the way down to, “Well, maybe she’s having a party.” But what kind of party do you have with forty-eight cans of dough? I had to ask.

The woman laughed nervously and drew her hand through her smooth blonde hair. “Oh! I teach a junior-high life skills class, and today we’re cooking a dinner. I’m going to teach them how to make ‘Bubble Pizza.’ ”

Instantly, I had a snapshot of Bubble Pizza. The separated biscuit rounds smashed onto an ungreased cookie sheet, smothered in Prego, caked with cheese curls, and baked at 350 degrees for ten minutes. I could see this pretty teacher standing in front of her class, holding aloft a can of dough to show how to press the back of a spoon along the seam of the can to pop it open. I could see our nation’s youth, diligently taking notes.

Life Skills. In 1985 we called it “home ec,” and it was widely considered an easy A. With the advances in convenience foods since then, anybody who can press the popcorn button on a microwave oven must be guaranteed top marks.

I remember cooking at age sixteen, stewing a whole chicken and making from scratch leaden baking-powder biscuits that not even my dog would sniff. These early adventures did not transform me into a good cook, but did help me to take culinary missteps in stride. Two Thanksgivings ago, in the course of using a “foolproof” Reynolds roasting bag, I neglected to remove the bird’s plastic wrapper and laminated a twenty-pound turkey. The year before I tried the traditional roasting method, and terrifying flames leapt out of the oven when my snoopy sister looked in to see “what that smell was.” Someone recently gave me a recipe for “Beer Can Turkey,” which calls for stuffing a twelve-ounce can of Schlitz into the bird’s cavity. I am afraid to attempt this until the terror alert goes down. I don’t know if you can call the bomb squad to defuse poultry.

The point is, it’s a part of life to take chances. The kitchen is one of the few places in life where even if you don’t succeed, folks are more than willing to give you a chance to try, try again. Pre-grated cheese is to cooking what Legos are to architecture. Read a recipe, screw it up. Decide what you’ll do next time and eat the mistakes.