I Need Cooking Lessons.

Brace yourself. Thanks to Ms. Karma, I am now the proud owner of my very own toaster oven!

It's true. In spite of the name of this blog, I didn't actually own a toaster oven before today. I'll bet you thought I collected toaster ovens or something. No, I've just always thought "toaster oven" was a funny appliance, and don't ask me why. It's just the way my mind works. Sorry if you thought the blog name was more meaningful.

Anyway.

Ms. Karma bought me a toaster oven for my birthday. She also gave me some links to some recipes. I started out by looking at recipes for food you can prepare in a toaster oven. But then I got distracted and started reading a recipe for Portabella Vegetarian Gravy, which should definitely not be prepared in a toaster oven.

As I looked over the apocalyptic recipe from hell, I realized why I don't cook. It is a major hassle. Yes it is. Don't argue with me. La la la, I'm not listening.

Listen - there are so many problems with this recipe I don't even know where to begin.

#3 (I told you I don't know where to begin) - There are no portabella mushrooms in this recipe for Portabella Vegetarian Gravy. It's a trick. The mushrooms are part of a vegetable stock, which must be prepared in advance. In the middle of the recipe, the poor unsuspecting cook is told to add the vegetable stock.

See, that's what frustrates me. Originally, the poor unsuspecting handsome and extremely horny tall blonde cook, or whatever, will be under the impression that the recipe takes nearly two hours, which is a ridiculous amount of time when you can make that powdered gravy stuff in, like, twenty minutes as long as you have an adult to supervise.

But this gravy takes almost two hours to make. Or so our sexy, baby-faced, cute, boy-next-door cook thinks until he realizes he was supposed to have already spent an hour and a half making vegetable stock, which is essential to the gravy. Please tell me who has time to prepare gravy that takes longer than three hours to prepare?!

No, it's not even a matter of time. I mean, in all honesty, I've got three hours to spare. But would I rather spend it sucking down cocktails in The Vortex or making portabella gravy? Do you realize how many episodes of Judge Judy I could watch in the time it takes to make gravy?

#7 (still confused) - If I were preparing this gravy (which would only happen under one condition, which you'll find out soon) I would not realize I was supposed to have made the stock in advance. I would immediately feel the need to go suck down the aforementioned cocktails in The Vortex for a good twenty minutes to decide if the man I was trying to impress by cooking such a dish was actually worth it.

#2 - After deciding that my potential for getting laid is worth everything I ever put myself through, I would huff back into the kitchen to start work on the recipe once again. Next, my patience would be immediately destroyed due to the instructions telling me to "cook roux, stirring, until pale golden".

Excuse me, master chefs of Epicurious.com, but can we back up a second? Pale golden means nothing to me. Is that the color of a stick of butter? Or should it look more like a healthy person's urine stream? Am I going for Paris Hilton's hair color or Olivia Newton John's dress for the dance-off in Grease?

#19 - Imagine I am standing there trying to add the vegetable stock in the manner indicated by the recipe..."a fast stream", which, again, begs the question, "fast like Paris Hilton or fast like a stream of urine?". So I'm standing there whisking, whisking, whisking - which I could totally do forever thanks to my wrist exercises - but it all seems so futile, yet I really like him and he's just...just...well, he's enormous and so hot and sexy, and so I finish the gravy anyway and just (forgive me) take my lumps. And I am sweating and frustrated and have only three and a half cups of gravy to show for all my efforts.

But then comes the clincher. This is the worst part of all.

I still have to make something to put the gravy on.

And before you even comment...yeah, I thought of that too, but do you think he'd enjoy having gravy there? It's kind of kinky.