Dyslexic oven knobs and Chicken finger stir-fry

I’ve been having trouble in the kitchen lately, which is a bit of a problem. I mean, you have to eat don’t you… so I can’t really avoid that room of the house. If I was having trouble with the garden shed I could just shut the door and forget about it. It’s not like I’m really hanging out to do gardening after all. But the kitchen…

The first sign of the trouble ahead was when I went to heat up some milk for a pasta sauce. I carefully put the pot on the right-rear element, scanned the controls for the appropriate knob, and turned it to high. There is a saying, “a watched kettle never boils”. I have another saying, “a pot on the wrong element never even has a chance of boiling”. Here I am staring at the calm surface of the milk in the pot, wondering why there is no steam, no little bubbles that show that something is happening… wondering why my left hand is starting to get hot! Instead of the right-rear it seems I’ve turned on the left-rear element.

“So what”, I hear you say.

“We’ve all accidentally turned on the wrong element”.

Yes… well… how do you explain that I did the same thing three more times this week?! And I was really concentrating too! I take my time, confirm which element the pot is on, check the knob, re-check the pot, re-check the knob, slightly less confidently turn it on, wait… dammit!

I think I’m seriously losing my mind! How hard can it be to turn the correct knob?

Last night I had a different problem while cooking at my parent’s house (they are away so my brother and I have been eating dinner there to check on the place and make it look like someone is still living there). I was chopping an onion for use in a chicken stir-fry. As I was cutting I thought to myself, “be careful Andrew… slow down… sharp knife”. Why don’t I listen to myself I wonder? I had nearly finished my chopping when the knife slipped off the onion and on to… no prizes for guessing… my middle finger. A quick exclamation followed by a profusion of the red stuff from the end of my finger. I washed it out while yelling to my brother to go find a bandage, and being a skilled first-aid practitioner (yeah right) put pressure over the surprisingly deep wound.

Mark goes bounding up the stairs to the bathroom to look for medical supplies and I can hear him banging around. Cupboard doors are crashing, drawers are opening and shutting at a furious rate. I’m bleeding everywhere. Then I hear him come back down the stairs… with the bandage? No… he’s now in the guest bathroom. Crash! Bang! Thump! Silence… this time… here he comes. No. He’s going back upstairs again. I’m still bleeding. More loud noises before he comes back with some ridiculous gauze pad that I have to tie on my finger with some equally ridiculous gauze bandage… apparently no sticky band-aids in the circa 1970 first aid kit.

For those that are interested… the stir-fry, although considerably delayed in it’s delivery, was very tasty.

We had takeaway tonight.