I Have A New Mother. Her Name is Martha.

And I Have The Burns to Prove It.

When I was little, I was not allowed in the kitchen unless it was to make Toll House chocolate chip cookies.

Toll House cookies were demanded when I had clearly done something wrong, because they knew that if I tried to make them, I would end up eating all the batter, causing me to crawl into bed with a stomach ache for days.

I hated those stupid Toll House cookies. I would trade them for a Chips a Hoy any day of the week at school, rather than to have to suck on a homemade Toll house in the cafeteria

Still, I could make that batter with my eyes closed.

But baking Toll House cookies doesn”t exactly feed a family, or a hungry spouse, and they would most likely kill a dog.

But what could I do?

I knew my way around a kitchen, the way a platypus knows his way around a pickle ball court.

BUT thanks to modern times and helpful boxes that promise a creation in 5 minutes, there was hope, yet briefly lived.

As box after box, the glimmer of light or any heavenly hope or a promise that I would be able to actually cook just a fricken chicken,

waned.

I had a client one day spend a full 45 extra minutes with me trying to explain exactly every step to cooking a chicken in the oven.

They made me write it down,

they drew diagrams,

they made me repeat what they said.

They were sure they had finally gotten some cooking into this thick skull.

That day, I went home, well I bought a chicken — then went home, ( bc who keeps full chickens in their freezer?! Not me)

Anyway, got home with a new fresh dead chicken, from whatever make or model the nice client had instructed me to get -poundage and all, then followed the rest of their instructions; molested a chicken, and put some onions and other fowl things up its rear, all to get to the point, -that I didnt know which way they were supposed to lay in the over.

Was I supposed to put them on their back? Like a dead bug?

Or was I supposed to put them on their knees, as if the pan was a prayer rug?

To this day, I still don’t know the answer.

I’m sure I decided on one way or another, but the ethical and religious undertones of the whole thing made me lose my apetite all together.

Eventually, after many failed food boxes, and many pretend mothers kindly tried, but always failed to guide me into a kitchen bliss of yesterdays.

Finally,

appeared, Martha.

Martha appeared, the way all fairy God mothers do, acknowledged as a hail-mary button-click on my phone, Martha arrived looking like nothing special.

She showed up cleaverly disguised as a fairly average, tired,

and used,

yellow box.

She brought cards, with photos, but then again, didn’t they all?

How would she be any different?

And who is Marley?

These questions flowed passed my already dulled and unimpressed brain, as yet another attempting mother disguised as a box of prep food, shows up thinking she could mold me into a kitchen genie.

Yawn.

I burned myself on the toast naturally, that I was instructed to have ready for the soup I was making. Grabbing some ice I heard:

“ I told you to put it on light, did you put it on light?

:O

huh?

whaT?

I chalked up the mutterings to a burn, brain- zap or something…

of course I wasn’t hearing things.

The next night, there was still more in the box, so since we were trying to save money, we decided to cook some shrimp fettuccine or something.

And then something strange happened again.

After pouring some sauce into a frying pan, and mixing some legumes and what not, i was about half way thru whatever i was supposed to be making, and i stirred the sauce around mixing the stuff on faily high-

bc i want it to cook fast bc we were hungry duh!

And I heard that voice again.

“Remember…

….stir slowly, this isnt a race you know…”

I turned around, and there she was, Martha, sitting on the ikea wooden barstool in our kitchen, chewing on some celery.

“Surprised?” she said, smiling.

“Now turn down the heat a little, you have it too high”

I was speechless.

So I just turned back around, and looked at the heat nob on the stove, which of course I had on high, …and I turned it down to medium.

“Like that?” I asked

“You could even put it on

medium- low, in the middle of the 2,

it’s OK, you just want a simmer on this”

“Ok.”

I choked, trying not to cry.

No one had ever been that patient with me in the kitchen in my life, and it was frickin Martha Stewart of all people!

“ You’re doing great” she said.

A tear plopped in the sauce.