In Which I Am Not A Chef

So, I had to make pudding one time for a thing at work when I was an intern.

Which, you might think is sort of strange.  Literally no one brings pudding to anything.  I mean, don’t get me wrong – I like pudding but…it’s just not something that you eat a social gatherings.  Right?

Pudding is weird and smooshy and you have to be a certain kind of person to want to eat it.

Be that as it may, it was tradition (apparently) for the old intern to make pudding for the new intern.

From scratch.

Because that’s a normal thing people do to welcome other people.  “So glad you’ll be working with us! Here’s some….pudding….yes.”

I mean, this is just me, but wouldn’t cookies or cupcakes be slightly less, I don’t know, strange?

But.  I was determined to do this tradition justice.  Especially since the intern that welcomed me had made perfect salted caramel pudding.

I would make pudding if it killed me.  And, knowing me, it probably would.

^^actual footage of me trying to make food

So.  I found a recipe that had cute little pictures of pudding bowls and happiness on it and went to pick up all the ingredients.   And let me tell you, there are so many egg yolks in pudding.  SO MANY.  I had no idea.

Everything was going swimmingly until I actually read the recipe.  There were like seven different layers of ingredients that all had to be made separately and then added together, first of all.  Nobody has enough mixing bowls to make pudding.  It requires an entire cabinet of mixing bowls.

And then, every line said something like “boil the thing and then gradually stir in the other thing until it smells right and then add that other thing but just enough otherwise everything will explode and life will be terrible.”

Listen, website recipe lady.  I’m not a magic miracle pudding ingredient stirrer, okay? I have no idea what “the right amount” of anything is, much less any idea of how fast to stir stuff into other stuff.

However, I pushed on.  By that I mean, I gave everything my best guess and tried not to think about the likely results.  I stirred the stuff into the stuff and heated it all on the stove and tried to make caramel out of water and brown sugar and it was crazy.

So then after you heat everything and stir it and dump it all together, you’re supposed to chill it in the fridge for like a day.  And I thought finally, a thing I can actually do.

But, when I removed it from the fridge the next day, it looked like this:

Obvi, I snapchatted my failure to everyone because why not

The pudding had not solidified at all.  And I know you’re wondering what those brownish lumps are.  They are cookie crumbs, I’ll have you know.  And they were supposed to be a delicious crust on the bottom of the cups, not floating all around like that.

Anyway, obviously operation pudding was a complete failure.  I didn’t even try any of it, I was too afraid of my own creation.  All of it was summarily dumped down the sink (so many wasted egg yolks…).

I made chocolate chip cookies instead, late that night.  Come to find out, the “tradition” was fairly new, and none of my coworkers were that attached to the whole pudding idea.

I could have spared myself the emotional rollercoaster.

But, hindsight is 20/20.  And hey, at least now I know. Pudding isn’t my thing.  Pudding will never be my thing.

And that’s okay, because pudding is sort of strange anyway.

On the Usefulness of Hand Turkeys

Everybody has gotten to a place on some test at some point where you’ve look down at the page and realized there is no hope.  Your doom is sealed, defeat is inevitable, there is no way out.

When (not if) this occurs, there are two available options:

1. Give up.
2. Give up, but with style.

I mean, if you’re going to fail, might as well make the most of it, right?

In high school (and even undergrad), I never had the guts to go through with option two.  Grad school, however, was a different story.

At the beginning of my first semester, all the new grad students had to take placement exams in music theory and in music history.  I’ve always been pretty strong in both areas, so I might’ve skimped on studying just a tad.

It was just an entrance exam, how hard could it be?

As soon as I looked at the first page, I had my answer: Pretty darn.

As I paged through the test I left more and more questions blank.  It covered the entirety of music history as we know it, and, well, I only remembered parts.  I nailed 20th century avant-garde movements, and most things that related to classical piano repertoire.  But, I was sunk on that first page (ancient Greek music theory).

I mean, come on, who honestly remembers what the heck tetrachords are and how they function in the Greek theoretical system?

Nobody, that’s who.  And definitely not me.

As the minutes ticked by, I stared glumly at my completely blank first page.  This was a terrible embarrassment for perfectionist me.  The end of the world, really.

But then, I had an idea.  I could save this.  I didn’t know the answers, but I could save this.

Instead of answering the questions, I drew a magnificent hand turkey.  My best work.

(Obviously, this isn’t a picture of the one I actually drew, although I hope my professor kept it).  I put tears on his eyes, and drew a speech bubble that said “I know none of the answers.  Have a great day”.

Needless, to say, I failed the test – primarily because of the Greek theory section.  But (miraculously) only by a few points.

I actually was later able to convince my professor to let me skip the review classes in spite of my test score.

 

He never said so, but I’m pretty sure it was because I drew such a great hand turkey.