Cooking With Care

I bunch the blanket into a misshapen ball and hug it to my body. Then wrap my legs over and under the mess. Finally, I grab my pillows and place them under and over my head to create a sandwich with my brain being the meat. 

This is my comfort position. Anytime I'm sad or angry or thinking too much, I go to my bedroom and form the position. It has never failed to make me feel better.

At least, it never fails to make me feel better before.

Who does that? Who gropes a girl all freaking night, in front of her family no less, then dumps her when the gathering gets a little too boring? It's not his family everywhere, watching their every move. Why should he care that I felt like a broken play thing when he got up to leave? What does he care if I had to hide in the bathroom for twenty minutes just so my aunts and uncles couldn't see me crying and try to give me their god-awful advice. 

God, this sucks! My top leg is too cold, my bottom leg is too hot, my head feels trapped, and the blanket is too freaking lumpy. I throw my stupid pillows across the room and kick at the stupid blanket and scream into my stupid sheets.

“Okay, this isn't working,”  I mutter.

I get up and wrap my robe over my shoulders and stomp off to my little kitchen down the hall. The counters are bare and there's nothing in the goddamn fridge. No ice cream. No chocolate. No cookie dough. How's a girl supposed to stress eat her pain away in this damn house?! 

Just to make me feel better, I start slamming the cupboards. One bounces back open and I want to scream. That’s just great! Close dammit! Just for good measure, I slam the stupid door shut ten times. A brown container jumps ship and falls with a bang to the green tiled floor.

I sigh and stare at it in the dark. Well… at least it didn’t open all over the floor. I head over to the kitchen doorway and flip the switch. Crappy fluorescent light flickers to life and I notice that my cupboards have a couple new scratches and dents. I sigh again. Well, it's not the first time I took my anger out on my kitchen. I bend down and grab the brown plastic from the floor.

Cocoa powder. Didn't know I still had this. David wanted me to give baking a shot. Something about his mother's crumb cake. Freaking mama's boy… 

Hmm… If I don't have any stress food, I could just make some.

First I'll need a recipe. I rush back to my room for my iPhone. Okay, what do I need and what do I have? Don't have chocolate chips. Cookies out. What does cocoa powder make? Cake? Takes too long. I'll try brownies.

“Let’s see…” I scroll down Google a bit. Caramel brownies? Don't have that shit and it's way too late for shopping. Stupid boyfriend keeping me up at night and not even in the fun way. Selfish bastard. Recipe for the best brownies? This looks basic. Okay. I'll try this.

Step one. Preheat oven to 350. Easy enough. Next. Gather your forces. Um… ½ cup of butter. I only have “I can’t believe it’s not butter” butter, but whatever. I’m sure that’s fine. 1 cup sugar… Done. 2 eggs… Shit, are my eggs still good? 

I go to check. Uh… How in the hell do you read this sell by date? P.413 721? What? Where’s the freaking date on this thing?! I google ‘How do you read the sell by date on egg cartons’? No, this picture has a date. Mine doesn’t have a date. What gives? New plan. ‘How do you know if your eggs are still good’? See if they float. If they sink they’re good, but if they float then they’re rotten. Great. 

I grab a bowl and fill it with tap water. Here goes nothing… I drop an egg into the water. Oh, thank God! No floaters here! Good. Moving on now.

I need 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Another David purchase, but I got it. I got my ⅓ cup of Cocoa powder. Finally, I need ½ cup of flour, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of baking powder. That’s everything. 

Step Three. Mix butter with sugar, eggs, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Sounds good. I grab my biggest Tupperware and dump those three ingredients in the bowl. Grabbing a fork, I set to mixing. Damn, this is impossible! Everything is chunky and rough. I can't get the butter to mix. Maybe it was too cold in my fridge. Would it mess with the other stuff if I nuked it now? I'm sure it'll be fine. I set the microwave for three minutes. That should melt it.

What's next?

‘Grease and flour an 8-inch square pan’. Why do I need to grease it if I'm just gonna drop flour all over it right after? That's stupid. It's probably for those really crappy pans that everything sticks to. I'll be fine. Mine says non-stick. I've had it for years and, while cooking might not be my thing, I use this pan the most. 

After setting the pan on the oven, I grab the unopened bag of flour that's been sitting in my kitchen for a year. Nice to finally use this crap. The bag won't open, though. It's got one of those highly sealed glued-on seams. It's like the manufacturers think thieves are gonna want the flour when they steal something from a kitchen. 

Shit, how did women open these things? My mom used to do this shit all the time! Come on already! I grab both sides and pull as hard as I can. The paper bag makes a cry of horror as it rips and dumps flour all over my PJ's. Shit shit shit! Quickly, I hold the bottom of my shirt out to catch the white powder. A lot of it flies up in a cloud of choking particles and the rest falls to my feet, but I do manage to catch some.

I stand in place for a moment, processing what just happened. “Right, okay… What now?” I ask the empty room. 

The microwave beeps.

I bite my lip and nod my head. Yep, that makes sense. Slowly, I shuffle over to my microwave and take the bowl out. All the while, holding a small sum of flour in my shirt.The bowl goes next to my pan. I look back at my shirt. Is that enough for ½ cup? Could be. Worth a shot, at least.

I grab a cup from the cupboard next to me and use it to scoop up a bunch of flour from my shirt. Oh good! That's more like a full cup. I put half in the bowl and half in the pan and let the rest join the flour on the floor. 

After stirring the mix again and spreading the flour on the pan, I grab the other ingredients to mix. It says to ‘beat’ the rest in. What’s ‘beat’? Can I do it without a mixer? I shrug and dump the rest of the crap into the bowl. Whatever. Mixing is freaking mixing. It doesn’t matter.

Step four or is it five? ‘Spread batter into prepared pan’. Sounds easy enough. I pick up the bowl and start to pour. The stuff is pretty thick, though, and slow. I tip it over a little more. Not much faster. I grab the fork I've been using and try to help it along,  but the bowl is too heavy to hold with one hand. I need better leverage. I grab the pan and the bowl and move to sit on the flour coated floor. With my back to the oven, and the half full pan in between my legs, I start pouring again. I use my knees as a base so I can comfortably hold the bowl with one hand and the fork with the other. 

Behind me, the oven sounds the alarm to it's finished preheating cycle. This is all coming along nicely.

A bit of the flour dust wafts up my nose and I sneeze, dropping the bowl into the pan. 

Well, almost nicely.

Step five or six. ‘Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Do not overcook’. Oh really? Don't overcook? That doesn't sound right. Doesn't everyone want burnt brownies? Stupid condescending instructions. 

After I put the pan in the oven for twenty seven minutes, I go for a shower to get all the flour off. I leave white footprints on my carpet as I walk.

You know what? This was a good idea. Sure I made a mess, but I did it. I feel loads better now. 

I put on slippers so I don't get flour on my feet again and the timer goes off as I'm walking back into the kitchen. I pull the pan out and set it on top of the oven. “Oh wow! It looks like brownies. I did it!” I high-five the oven.

Okay then, instructions call for letting it cool, so I decide to hang out in my room for a bit while I wait. 

The next thing I know, the light from my window is waking me up. I smile. Note to self: If the perfect position in bed can't make you sleep, make a mess of yourself in the kitchen.

The kitchen looks like a tornado ran through it. Funny how much damage a tiny girl can cause. I check the brownies and they feel cool, so I go for a knife. My first bite tastes like late-night bad decisions. I smile and take another bite.