I am a terrible cook.
Not simply a bad cook, but a dangerously terrible cook. Which is kind of embarrassing, considering I am a lab geek and my entire job description is to follow instructions, most of which are laid out similar to a recipe. Being a scientist who can't cook is akin to being an architect who is afraid of heights.
My first job was as a certified nursing assistant at a retirement community. Cooking wasn't in the job description, nor were there any questions relating to food prep or handling during the job interview. But in an effort to save money, my section of the retirement home decided that they would leave all food prep to a staff of high school girls, none of whom had any food prep certification. They also decided that they wouldn't hire any nurses aside from the day manager, opting to let the CNA staff administer medications, including giving insulin shots. (In case you didn't know, this is highly, highly illegal. Which is why I didn't work there for very long.)
So, assuming I could cook, or at least follow basic instructions, they put me to work.
Making spaghetti.
Spaghetti really isn't all that difficult or dangerous to make. Except when the instructions ask you to preheat the sauce by putting two cups of canola oil in a nonstick pan, an instruction which I didn't quite understand. If the pan is non-stick, why in Vader's name would you need canola oil, much less two whole cups of it? Also, why did it ask for a frying pan, when a sauce pan would be more appropriate?
But, fully aware of my lack of cooking knowledge, I decided that the recipe knew more than me and was worth trusting.
It's probably also worth mentioning at this point that I grew up in a home with electric stoves. The retirement home used gas. Which involves open flame. Canola oil, being loaded with hydrocarbons, is of course flammable. Now, not nearly as flammable as gasoline, which is why it's safe to cook with. Assuming that said canola oil doesn't get pushed out of the pan and onto the open flame.
Which is exactly what happened when I dumped the spaghetti sauce into the frying pan.
Right as my boss walked into the kitchen.
The entire thing exploded. The flames hit the stove hood, a good four feet above out industrial-sized stove. It all happened in a weird, slow motion detail. While my boss was standing behind me screaming, all I could hear was my high school chemistry teacher's voice telling me to remove it from the heat source. I snapped into action, moving the pan to a different burner, which was off, and cutting the power to the original burner. The flames stopped immediately, and fortunately no damage was done, other than an irate 60 year old boss who asked my why the fuck my mother never bother to teach me to cook. Still in shock, I snapped back, "Because my mother was busy working her ass off to provide me with a good home and education," and stormed out of the kitchen. (This was also the woman who told me a week before, while on the job, that I would burn in hell if I lived with a guy before I was married. Our company didn't exactly have a human resourced department.)
I didn't get fired, because the head chef looked at the recipe and agreed that it was poorly written, raising the same questions about the excessive use of canola oil. Another girl, who was working in the kitchen at the same time, pointed out that I put the fire out before it caused damage, and verbally pointed out how the fire alarms failed to go off.
So I put my two weeks notice in the next day, started my first semester of college a few weeks later, and to this day, I always read the lab instructions the day before the lab, and always ask questions.
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