Cooking Without Mom

I have an idea for a new cooking show: Cooking Without Mom.

We’ll send the mom on a weekend getaway at a bed and breakfast*, and watch what happens when her family tries to conquer the kitchen without her.

Cooking Without Mom - Left and Write
Meijer's rotisserie chicken

Perhaps it should be titled Man vs Small Appliances.
Tall Brother tries to figure out the hand-held beaters. Vvuhriii! The machine whirrs. “Ahhh!” he exclaims, “I didn’t know the On/Off button turned it on!”

“Um, duh!” onlooking Father observes.

“No, I didn’t know the On button would make the beaters spin! I thought it would just turn the whole thing on,” Tall Boy tries to explain.

He turns the beater speed way up and beats the air. “What speed should I use to mash the potatoes?”

Eventually he mashes them and Dad adds sour cream. Then the phone rings, and Dad ducks out of the kitchen to answer it.

Tall Boy asks his sister if he should salt the potatoes.

“Well, did you add any salt yet? And did you add sour cream?” his sister asks.

Tall Boy explains that Dad added the sour cream, but not salt yet. “So how much salt should I add?”

“I don’t know! Just add some and taste it,” she replies.

He adds some salt and tastes the potatoes, and concludes that they need more salt. Meanwhile, his sister is cutting up broccoli for broccoli salad. “Who left this peeled potato on the cutting board?” Whoever was peeling the potatoes forgot to put the last one in the pot to boil.

Dad comes back and arranges bacon on a wire rack (like the kind you cool cookies on.) Supposedly, cooking bacon on a rack (with a pan underneath to catch the drips) results in crispier bacon. We’ve tried it before with mom. Tall Boy switches from the salt grinder to a different salt shaker in an effort to salt the potatoes enough. He begins to worry that he has added too much salt, even though he still can’t taste it. Fearless Youngest Brother comes to the kitchen and takes over the salting of the potatoes.

Sister mixes a handful of raisins and a dollop of miracle whip with the cut up broccoli. She knows her mom adds sugar, but she has no idea how much. She guesses a teaspoon, and tastes the salad. It is missing the salty bacon flavor, because the bacon is still baking.

Dad decides we should sit up and eat because the rotisserie chicken from Meijer is cooling off, as are the finally-salty-enough mashed potatoes. When Dad went to the store to bring home the bacon, he also bought corn in a microwaveable bag. (Something Mom would never do. She tries to avoid using the microwave.) After we gave thanks for the food, Dad zapped the corn. He started dishing up the chicken. Then the bacon started smoking a little bit out the oven vent. When we opened the oven…

[Now is probably as good a time as any for a commercial break. Because there is never a good time for a commercial break! Anyways, if you like what you see let me know in the comments here, on Facebook, or on Pinterest. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.]

We opened the oven, and discovered that some of the bacon managed to curl and hang halfway off the rack. Dad grabbed some tongs and put it back on the rack. We cooked it for a few more minutes, and then helped ourselves to strips of bacon to eat with broccoli salad.

Dad gets another call and goes into the living room to take it. By the time he comes back, most of his children are close to done eating. He picks the last of the meat off the bone, and when he is done eating, mom calls. Tune in next time when the family runs out of an important ingredient…

[theme music, credits roll, end of pilot episode]

*It wasn’t really a bed and breakfast. This post is loosely based on a true story. Some of you know my mom spent the weekend saying ‘goodbye for now’ to my grandpa, her dad. He went home to heaven on a Sunday. But, we were reminded on Friday at his funeral that humor is a part of the grieving process, too. This post is in loving memory of my grandpa, who knew how to laugh.