Slightly Charred

To the broke, unmotivated and hopeless college kid with no job, something like cooking your own meal can be trivial. On a good week, you’d get anywhere between 30 and 50 bucks that you’d need to stretch for the whole month. You could spend that on chicken, fresh veggies and pasta. Of course, Taco Bell is right down the street and a box of ramen is a buck fifty - which means you can buy a few cases of beer on the weekends if you need to.

This was my life at Kent State University in gloomy Kent, Ohio, and aside from studying journalism and writing sketch comedy, I had no real life skills. I had bad finances, no plan for when I graduated and I could’ve stood to lose a few pounds (still could). Not to mention all of this was at a time when journalism began really racing toward the bottom of the hill as an industry. Quite simply, I was unmotivated to do really anything other than make people laugh and drink. 

However, nothing does more to motivate a college kid that sleeps on a bed with no box spring than trying to impress a girl. It makes sense, since the invention of fire, men have been trying to figure out how to do this. In fact, I’m convinced those paintings on the cave walls in France were the earliest recorded step-by-step guide for men on how to attract them. It was now my turn to try to figure this out with a girl I met while on a student film set.

My problem is that when you have no money or job, there’s not much you can do BUT go to the aforementioned Taco Bell and drink (which, in my case, is slang for bumming box wine off of your roommate). Fancy restaurants with expensive meals were out of the question. Hell, even going to the local movie theater was iffy - five bucks for a medium bag of popcorn?

Something about this girl made my heart flutter and skip a beat everytime we talked. When I heard her laugh, my knees buckled and I became an addict looking for my next hit of dopamine. No way was I going to let my financial shortcomings stop me from seeing where a date with this girl could take me.

So, in an attempt to better myself ever so slightly, I decided it was time to learn how to cook. 

It wasn’t a total long shot, I already knew how to make eggs, how hard could the rest be? A little oil in the pan, a protein and some salt and pepper and badda bing badda boom I’m a poor man's Emril Lagasse. Piece of cake, absolutely no problemo at all.

My roommate, a proud American with Italian roots and too many jobs and side jobs to count, helped me settle on making chicken parmesan. To us, it was the cheapest, most upscale dish a desperate guy could make while pinching pennies. All it really is is chicken, egg, breading, sauce and pasta with cheese. He would even help me gather the ingredients. 

Additionally an Aldi recently opened up in Kent, which is a godsend if you’re on an extreme budget. I will say this though, if you plan to go shopping, make a list and stick to it. We walked in looking for six items and left with twenty other things we didn’t actually need, including two pallets of yogurt, three cartons of kiwi juice, two bags of chips and, for some reason, a jar of olives. 

We were so excited about all the extra things we could afford, we forgot to double check if I had everything I needed for the date.

“Oh well, I got the main stuff,” I hummed to myself. “We can cross that bridge if we get there and worry about missing things later.”

The plan for the night was to have her over by 6:30 p.m. to eat. From there, we’d go to a musical being put on by the school’s theater department (Pro Tip: students get into these events for free). It was “Into The Woods,” which was recently adapted into a movie featuring Meryl Streep, Chris Pine, Anna Kendrick and more. It was a frugal, foolproof plan that made me seem more cultured than I actually was. 

There were absolutely no flaws that we could think of.

Except I didn’t know how to cook, let alone correctly time how long it took to cook a dish you were going in blind to do. For example, if one were to make this right, it would probably take you between 45 minutes to an hour and thirty minutes to do. I decided I would make mine in 30, which if done correctly, would have been a land speed record or something.

Another premium example of this would be the fact that you must first tenderize the chicken breast before cooking it. Seems easy enough until you factor in that to complete this task, a meat tenderizer would be the optimal tool.

I realized this right about when my date knocked on my door. We greeted each other and I showed her around the crummy, fifth-floor corner apartment that was sold to us as “premium.” To her credit, she was a good sport about pretending to be impressed when I showed her the carpets that stretched alllllll the way from the front door into the bedrooms in the back AND the balcony that just barely had concrete missing from its platform. She even pretended to admire the old bougie furniture my roommate got from his dad, who recently moved out of state.

She did not, however, see my room. The undecorated, mattress directly on the floor, clothes in clear plastic bins with a broken black futon in the middle of the room room would be saved for a different night if I was lucky.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” I lied, ducking into the back of the galley style kitchen with barely any counter space. It did, however, have really nice tiles, so there’s that.

Most of the ingredients for the dish needed to be stored on a folding card table we used as the eating area of the apartment. In one corner of the room were empty pop and beer boxes that we needed to break down before throwing away and in the opposite corner was a trash can we thrifted.

In my very minimalist (slang for shitty) cooking toolkit was a sheet pan, a frying pan, a pot for the spaghetti and a metal spatula. I had settled on using a half empty tequila bottle to beat the chicken breasts into a manageable size for breading and frying. I rolled up my sleeves, took a deep breath, prayed this would go well and dove in.

THWACK

THWACK

THWACK

Luckily, my date couldn’t hear any of this because my roommate, in his infinite wisdom, decided to set the mood and play opera music as loud as he could form his bedroom. Imagine tenderizing chicken with a bottle of alcohol to the hum of Andrea Bocelli belting out big ones to an audience. Romantic.

Ten minutes and two heart breaking odes about the loss of a loved one later, the meat was breaded and into the frying pan.

The trick to using an old hand-me-down frying pan is to never use one. However, if you have to, patience and a silicone or plastic spatula are key to still making food. Of course, if you have neither patience or the right spatula, then a shit-ton of oil and high heat will “have to do,” according to my panicked brain. 

In a searing hot pan, breaded chicken sounds like a waterfall or wind rushing through trees during a hurricane. Of course this means that oil is prone to jump out of the pan and splatter everywhere on the stove, which in this case, it did. The worst thing to do is realize how big of a slob you are mid-date, worry it could be a deal breaker, and try to right the ship immediately. It’s good to realize the error of your ways but bad timing is such a bitch.

Not thinking about this, once the chicken was in the sheet pan and smothered in sauce (topped with cheese of course), I threw it in the preheated oven and got to work cleaning. With the hot frying pan still on the stove and a pot of boiling water cooking the noodles, I began breaking empty boxes down and sweeping up the dining area.

“How was your day?” I asked, poking my head around the corner. 

“It was good. Hey, why is your roommate playing opera music?”

Her question was left unanswered because as soon as I felt I did a good job sweeping the area, I was already attempting to clean up the excess oil and grease stains on the stove. An important note to make is that I attempted this with a paper towel. Remember what I said about patience? That also applies to cleaning a stove you were still using and making sure you don’t touch any burners that still might be in use or pans that were still wildly hot.

As soon as the paper accidentally touched the still searing-hot pan, it erupted in flames. Shocked and afraid of the potential burns, I dropped the fireball onto the still greasy, oily stove and watched as an inferno burst in front of me. 

“Oh geez, Oh geez, Oh geez,” I whispered to myself as I looked around the bone-stock kitchen for what I could do to stop this.

All I had in reach were paper towels, a tequila bottle previously used as a tenderizer, the shirt on my back and a jar of olives we forgot to put in the fridge. The fire grew as I rifled through the kitchen for anything that could put it out.

“How's it going in there? It smells great,” my date said from the adjacent room.

“Almost ready!” I proclaimed, trying to hide my panic.

It was not “almost ready.” The whole damn apartment was almost on the verge of burning down. At this point, I could have done one of two options. I could give up, call the fire department, and admit to myself that it was a sham to try and reach any higher than I could to do something great.

Or I could keep fighting. After all, isn’t love worth fighting for?

First, I removed the pan and pot from the fire and threw both into the sink. I knew water could spread a grease fire so instead of dousing it, I grabbed the nearest container filled with white stuff and tossed it on the flames to smother them.

Want to know what happens to fine sugar when it's thrown on a grease fire? It’s the opposite of putting it out. I barely had time to avoid the mini explosion before an eyebrow burned off. It was so intense that the fire somehow spread into the oven, the flame’s light flickering through the glass door.

Incidentally, this was also the moment I realized we forgot to grab salt from Aldi and we could neither smother the flame or season the chicken when it came out of the oven.

Desperate, I took my shirt off and began beating the hell out of the fire with it. The harder I swung, the more apparent it became I was no longer cooking to the outside world. Not even Bocelli could drown out the 12-round boxing match coming from the kitchen. When my date came to see what was happening, all the color left her face and she could do nothing but watch as a hairy, overweight and shirtless man attacked a grease fire with a now half-burned shirt.

“Oh my god.” she uttered.

“Dinner is almost there,” I said between each swing.

She was soon joined by my roommate, who surveyed the situation and eventually also started beating the fire with the shirt on his back. We looked like barbarians, grunting and hacking away at something we could not understand but knew it was the enemy. Soon, we were no longer swinging to put out, but swinging for blood - at least that’s what it felt like at the time.

When it became clear that the fire was barely showing any signs of completely dying, I had assumed the date was over. That the girl I was so taken by had run out of the apartment screaming into her Uber app, pleading for someone, anyone to pick her up. 

Perhaps it was time to accept that I would always be an unmotivated, directionless chump working a desk job he did not like for money he could not keep because of bills he could not afford. This is what I get for hoping, for wanting to do something new, I thought to myself.

“Baking Soda,” my date yelled from behind us. 

“Ugh?” I grunted, still in my barbaric form.

As the flames began to grow, my date began searching the cabinets for baking soda, which as it turns out also can be used to smother a grease fire. Within seconds she found what looked to be an old box of baking soda left behind from the apartment’s previous owners. Another second and the fire was out, all that was left was the smell of smoke and burnt food.

We stood there, in the kitchen, two shirtless men panting like they just ran the New York Marathon and a woman who probably should’ve left already. But she didn’t and I still had a meal to finish making. A little fire like this wouldn’t ruin the night.

Probably…Maybe…Okay…. so, like blind confidence, even if it’s important for your growth, isn’t such a great thing to have sometimes. I should have just let the chicken stay buried in the oven until I could be by myself. It was…not pretty.

Half of it was completely destroyed, turned into coal from the heat of the fire creeping into the oven. The other half was blackened but looked like it could’ve had some life still left in it. 

“Slightly charred, but it doesn’t look horrible,” I said. 

My roommate laughed at the notion, retreated back into his room and turned the music off, his optimism for me dashed. My optimism for the meal went away as soon as I remembered the noodles spilled into the sink, dying a watery death. The meal was officially ruined.

“Maaaaybe we should just grab food on the way to the musical,” my date said. “We’re running late anyway.”

“Oh, Okay,” I said.

We didn’t talk the entire way to Taco Bell, it was torture. While I drove, I couldn’t help but imagine the internal dialogue going on in her head. Something about how an idiot like me was ever allowed to have a driver’s license in the first place. Maybe she was considering her options and planning her escape during the musical. Perhaps pulling the fire alarm or sneaking out during the interlude.  

The food never tasted so salty and depressing in my entire life. To make matters worse, she kept making jokes about what happened, probably as an olive branch. The attempt was nice so I tried to internalize my embarrassment so as to not dampen the mood too much. We were still in this together after all.

After the show, I dropped her off at her apartment and went home. By then, the adrenaline rush of what happened had worn off and we were at least able to talk about the musical. There were even some laughs. Still, I couldn’t help but feel like I blew my shot.

Back home, I let out the longest sigh of my life while sinking to the floor. It must have sounded like I was dying in slow motion to my neighbors across the hall. After a while, I decided it was time to see the damage and figure out how screwed I was when it came to my security deposit.

Luckily, the damage to the kitchen only looked cosmetic and could be cleaned off with some Pine Sol, a wash rag and effort. My pride? That was a different discussion.

When I finished cleaning, I sat at the card table and looked at the charred chicken, letting the dismay warp me. What was I thinking, trying to cook something I had never attempted before? What did you think was going to happen? You’d just pick it up like a deck of cards and play Go Fish?

Dejected, I figured it couldn’t hurt at least trying the chicken that hadn’t completely died in the oven. If I was going to die single, I was going to do it with a full belly. I ripped off a piece of it and plopped it in my mouth. Surprisingly, it didn’t suck. Actually, it tasted good, great even. 

Bite after bite of this chicken, I began to get the crazy idea that maybe it wasn’t such a terrible thing to have motivation or at the very least some inspiration to be better than you were. Even if I didn’t get the girl, I could keep learning how to cook and chase this feeling. 

Then, I got a text from my date. 

“Hey, I had a great time tonight, even though you almost killed us. Maybe you can try cooking for me again some other time?”

Eight years later, I’m still with her, still cooking. This time though, the kitchen I work in is fully stocked and it’s cleaned ritualistically. It’s not spotless, but you’d be hard pressed to find any caked-on grease, fat or oil on the stove.

And yes, I keep it stocked with plenty of salt and baking soda - just in case.